Cookie row fuels £24m Google fine

Google has been forced to cough up $37.5m (£23.4m) – including a $22.5m (£14m) FTC fine – after admitting that it placed advertising tracking cookies on devices running Apple’s Safari browser without users’ permission.
The move coincides with the launch of a Microsoft marketing campaign which openly criticises Google for deliberately snooping on people’s emails as a means of sending them targeted advertising.
Some $17m will go to 10 US states and the District of Columbia, while the $22.5m fine will go to US Federal Trade Commission, the largest penalty the agency had secured for a violation of one of its orders.
The states had accused Google of placing tracking on computers of Safari users when they visited sites in Google’s DoubleClick ad network in 2011 and 2012.
By default, Apple’s Safari browser blocks third-party cookies, including cookies from DoubleClick to track a consumer’s browsing history. But from June 2011 to February 2012, Google altered its DoubleClick coding to circumvent those default privacy settings on Safari, without consumers’ knowledge or consent.
Revealing the settlement, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said: “By tracking millions of people without their knowledge, Google violated not only their privacy, but also their trust. We must give consumers the reassurance that they can browse the Internet safely and securely.”
A Google spokesman said: “We work hard to get privacy right at Google and have taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple’s browsers. The company also agreed to give consumers more information about cookies and how to manage them.

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