The Wall Street Journal have reported that Google are deliberately ignoring security settings designed to restrict the amount of information that the search giant can collect.
Apple’s Safari web browser (as seen on iPads and iPhones) comes with a suite of security tools that restrict the access that companies have to cookies – small files which record information about your surfing habits. By turning these tools on, third party websites are unable to keep tabs on your online behaviour, which can cause issues for targeted advertising campaigns such as Google AdWords.
However, when that third party website is Google, security settings apparently don’t matter. An investigation by researchers at Stanford University, which was picked up on by the Wall Street Journal shows that while advertisers aren’t allowed to store cookies on Safari-enabled devices, Google services were managing to evade the security settings and store cookies anyway.
Predictably, Google have claimed that this is all a misunderstanding brought about by Google wanting to offer personalised search on mobile devices, and not a deliberate ploy to harvest advertising information which would be unable to rivals such as Bing:
“We created a temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google’s servers, so that we could ascertain whether Safari users were also signed into Google, and had opted for this type of personalisation.”
“The Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser.”
“We didn’t anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers.
Senior Vice President Rachel Whetstone
Unsurprisingly, online privacy campaigners are yet again up in arms over Google’s refusal to play by the rules, and this latest breach could influence the EU’s decision on whether or not to change the way that cookies work – despite the fact everyone thinks this proposal isn’t a great idea.
One thing’s for sure. At a time when Google are regularly coming under fire, this isn’t going to be welcome news.
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