The Wall Street Journal is continuing its investigations into your privacy online and its latest piece suggests that Google is bypassing Apple’s privacy settings to track iOS users with mobile Safari. This isn’t the case, Google said in response.
Basically, the report said that Apple’s iOS browser has some features in it which block advertising cookies and it implies that Google is “tricking” it to allow its advertising cookies on this platform. Google doesn’t see it that way at all.
“The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why. We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled,” Google said in a statement. “It’s important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information.”
I’m the first one to cast disparaging looks at Google for its missteps but I really do think that the Journal is being a bit sensationalistic with this one. Remember, the Journal also had the series which essentially called cookies a privacy violation. I’m not saying that Google is perfect or even that it may not be doing something odd here but I’m going to err on the side of caution on this one.
[Via PhoneScoop, photo via Shutterstock, Sangoiri]