Google Tracked iPhones, Bypassing Apple Browser Privacy Settings - WSJ.com

chartier:

Jennifer Valentino-Devries:

Google Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Web browser on their iPhones and computers—tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.

The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users. Safari, the most widely used browser on mobile devices, is designed to block such tracking by default.

Google disabled its code after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

Despicable. Remind me again how Facebook is evil and Google (and Google+) is our savior.

(Source: chartier)

8 notes

  1. josephschmitt said: I really hope Apple doesn’t respond to this by blocking this technique, as it’s used for more than nefarious purposes. For example, we use it at Vimeo to write user settings and session cookies in our embedded video player.
  2. brainbangley reblogged this from chartier
  3. transpondster reblogged this from chartier and added:
    Jesus Christ. How dumb are these people? Can’t wait...tell us it was all a...
  4. chartier posted this