WebProNews

Tag: Safarigate

  • Judge: FTC’s Fine Of Google Was Adequate

    Judge: FTC’s Fine Of Google Was Adequate

    In August, Google was handed a $22.5 million penalty by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in relation to the tracking of Safari users in the incident that came to be known as “Safari-gate.” It was the largest fine in FTC history for a single company.

    Based on the revenue that Google brings in, however, some found this amount to be a mere slap on the wrist. Consumer rights group Consumer Watchdog was not impressed with the fine, and went so far as to seek the right to oppose it in a court of law – a right which it was ultimately granted.

    Now, we learn, however, that the group’s quest to see Google face tougher financial punishment has so far been unsuccessful. The AP reports that a federal judge rejected Consumer Watchdog’s plea, rulling that Google’s settlement with the FTC was “fair, adequate and reasonable.”

    The group will reportedly “pressure” the FTC to take Google to court in its big antitrust investigation, a scenario that is looking quite possible anyway, based on recent reports, though a number of politicians have come out on Google’s side of that issue. Last week, ten Republican senators signed a letter advising the FTC to ease up on tech companies like Google, though it did not actually mention the company by name. Congressman Jared Polis, a Democrat, also sent a letter to the FTC recently saying that to even discuss antitrust with regards to Google “defies all logic”.

    Time is close at hand, however, for the FTC’s final decision on whether or not to pursue an antitrust case against the company. A recent report said they were giving Google a few days to come up with a proposal. It’s been a few days. Stay tuned.

  • Google Creating A Red Team To Protect You From Themselves

    Google has always had the personal motto of “Don’t Be Evil.” That motto has become a joke among people in the tech industry lately as Google has been caught violating privacy rules in both “Safari-gate” and their collection of private data with Street View cars. It seems that Google is going to start cracking down on their own privacy snafus.

    A report from Threat Post has found that Google is looking to hire people for a red team. They’re specifically looking for a data privacy engineer to join said team. Here’s the relevant part of the job posting:

    As a Data Privacy Engineer at Google you will help ensure that our products are designed to the highest standards and are operated in a manner that protects the privacy of our users. Specifically, you will work as member of our Privacy Red Team to independently identify, research, and help resolve potential privacy risks across all of our products, services, and business processes in place today. Top candidates will have an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of modern web browsers and computer networks, enjoy analyzing software designs and implementations from both a privacy and security perspective, and will be recognized experts at discovering and prioritizing subtle, unusual, and emergent security flaws.

    What this all means is that Google wants somebody to scan their products for security holes. They want to make sure that something like “Safari-gate” never happens again. It’s a noble endeavor and could bring back a lot of goodwill that Google has lost over the last few months.

    That would be the case if people still weren’t accusing of Google of violating users’ privacy on purpose. Especially in the case of the Wi-Fi hacking via the Street View cars, people are convinced that Google was knowingly collecting the data. People also accused Google of knowingly bypassing Safari’s security to install ad tracking software on Macs using the browser.

    Whether or not Google knowingly infringed upon your privacy is not my place to decide. The FTC decided against Google though (and then gloated about it). Google may be rich, but they probably don’t want to be dropping 22 million on every privacy settlement they run into. That’s why the creation of a red team is so important. They can work out any privacy kinks in software before it ships so that privacy snafus don’t happen again.

    To the average person, this is only a good thing. It shows that Google is going to protect your privacy even more vigorously from now on. There will still be some conspiracy theorists who think Google is just trying to make their software even more invasive, but that’s not likely the case. Maybe it’s about time we let Google take back their “Don’t Be Evil” motto and really mean it.

  • FTC Announces Google’s Massive Fine For “Safari-gate” Settlement

    Last month, it was reported that Google was about to pay a $22.5 million penalty, courtesy of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, for privacy issues in what became known as “Safari-gate”. Today, that settlement has been officially confirmed, as the FTC has put out a statement discussing it.

    The fine is the largest that any single company has ever had to pay as the result of violation of a commission order.

    “The record setting penalty in this matter sends a clear message to all companies under an FTC privacy order,” said Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC. “No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place.”

    The FTC has also ordered Google to disable all tracking cookies it had said it wouldn’t place on consumers’ computers.

    In its initial complaint, the FTC charged that Google had placed a certain advertising cookie on Safari users’ devices, who visited sites in Google’s DoubleClick ad network, though Google had reportedly told users they would automatically be opted out of the tracking, as a result of Safari’s default settings.

    The FTC found that Google misrepresented its privacy assurances, and placed the cookie on the devices anyway. The FTC said, “Google exploited an exception to the browser’s default setting to place a temporary cookie from the DoubleClick domain. Because of the particular operation of the Safari browser, that initial temporary cookie opened the door to all cookies from the DoubleClick domain, including the Google advertising tracking cookie that Google had represented would be blocked from Safari browsers.”

    The FTC also found that Google had violated a previous settlement it reached with the agency back in 2011, related to Google Buzz.