To paraphrase a song from several years ago, “Oops, you did it again.” Google will pay $22.5
million to settle allegations by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it
breached Apple’s Safari Internet browser to track individuals
browsing behavior. To put the size of the penalty into
perspective, at the end of the last fiscal year, Google had total cash of $41.7
billion. The penalty won’t put too large a dent in their cash.
According to the FTC, Google deceived consumers and violated
terms of a consent decree signed with the commission in 2011 when it planted cookies
on Safari, bypassing Apple software’s privacy settings. This allowed Google track users’ Internet
browsing behavior. The FTC charged that
Google's actions violated the decree that was to prevent Google from misrepresenting the extent
of control that customers have over the collection of their information.
The FTC is empowered to levy penalties as large as $16,000 a
day. Perhaps a larger and more
appropriate penalty, $4.99 per user. In
addition, force the little Android person to wear a cone of shame from Pixar’s “Up”
and “Monster’s Inc.” for a year on the
Google search site. Create a little cartoon
app that causes the Android to jerk its head around when you type in either “cookie”
or “squirrel”.
This is the largest fine the FTC has ever
levied against a company. The FTC also ordered Google
to disable all the tracking cookies. The FTC is
giving a fair amount of time for Google to come into complete compliance Google has until February 2014 to do so.
“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,” stated FTC Chairman Jon
Leibowitz. Other companies the FTC has entered into settlements on
privacy allegations in the past include Facebook, Twitter Inc. and MySpace Inc.
“Trust no one” seems to be the operative phrase when it
comes to protecting your personal privacy.
Individuals should read up on how to turn off tracking in their web
browser, both in Apple’s and other
browsers.
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