People went into quite the stir, after WSJ published an article reporting that Google had been overriding Safari’s privacy settings to track user’s web browsing habits. Google used many forms of trickery to bypass Apple’s security settings, on both the desktop and iOS versions of Safari. Many users are questioning Google’s tactics.
The whole ordeal is now entering court, as Business Week reports that an Illinois man is suing Google Inc. in a Delaware court…
Google, the world’s biggest Internet-search company, has been dodging privacy settings in Safari, which serves as the primary Web browser on Apple’s iPhone and iPad products, lawyers for an Illinois man who uses the Safari browser said in a lawsuit filed today in federal court in Delaware.
The man’s attorney said that Google was willfully and knowingly breaking federal wiretap laws. Yesterday, lawmakers asked the FTC to probe Google over the Safari privacy scare.
Google’s code tricked Safari into thinking its web tracking was user-approved, however, that’s not the case. Quick to act, Google disabled the the tracking code after the WSJ’s report.
So why would Google even try to track users in the first place?
The tracking code helped Google understand its target market better, which allows them to better serve up ads through their Google Adsense program.
The Illinois man filed the suit on behalf of users “whose default privacy settings on the web browser software produced by Apple, known as Safari, were knowingly circumvented by Google.”
Do you think Google should be sued over this?