Google tracked users as they surfed the web on Apple's Safari browser, even though Apple says it has banned this kind of tracking, a researcher at Stanford University claims.
The search giant has been gathering data about which websites users visit in Safari -- the standard iPhone browser -- in order to serve up targeted ads, the Wall Street Journal reported. While this is standard fare in most browsers, Safari blocks this kind of activity.
The fact that Google had developed a workaround to Apple's restrictions was first spotted by Jonathan Mayer, a researcher at Stanford University's Security Lab and the Center for Internet and Society, and corroborated by a researcher working with the Journal.
Online privacy has been a hot button issue recently, after iPhone apps like Path and Hipster came under fire for storing data from users’ address books on their servers.
Google provides a plugin for other browsers that allows users to opt out from having their browsing habits monitored for advertising. But they didn't provide such a plugin for Safari users, on the grounds that Safari restricts this kind of information-gathering in the first place.
Google disabled their ad tracking cookies in Safari after the Journal got in touch with them for their story, according to the newspaper.
The language about why they don't offer a Safari opt-out plugin was also removed from their policies, though PC World Magazine has a screen shot of the cached version.
"The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why," Google's Senior VP of Communications and Public Policy Rachel Whetstone said in a statement. "We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It’s important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information." In other words, they aren't tied to your Google account, and they don't collect your email, name, or IP address.
According to Whetstone's statement, Google initially developed the work-around in order to let users "+1" things around the web -- the Google Plus version of Facebook’s “Like” feature. Google "didn't anticipate" that other advertising cookies would be allowed onto the browser along with the ones that allow the "+1" button to work, Whetstone claims, and started removing them when they came to their attention.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internet freedom advocacy group, decried Google’s actions in a blog post Friday. "It’s time for Google to acknowledge that it can do a better job of respecting the privacy of Web users," three EFF staffers wrote. "One way that Google can prove itself as a good actor in the online privacy debate is by providing meaningful ways for users to limit what data Google collects about them."
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