Google is locked in a legal battle with a group of twelve Apple users from UK, who have accused Google of tracking their web browsing discreetly, going around the Safari (browser) privacy settings, tracking cookies for advertising based on an individual’s web browsing. They say that cookies have been installed on their devices, by Google, without their consent. The lawsuit filed against Google was done so by the law firm Olswang.
Just last year, Google was fined $22.5m in US for tracking Safari users. It ignored the Safari privacy settings and stored cookies on the user’s device without his/her knowledge, through DoubleClick, a subsidiary of Google’s for advertisements.
The Safari users, or perhaps victims, thought their browsing content was safe, because of the reassuring statements given by Google. Apparently they were wrong to trust Google. “Google has a responsibility to consumers and should be accountable for the trust placed in them. We hope that they will take this opportunity to give Safari users a proper explanation about what happened, to apologize and, where appropriate, compensate the victims of their intrusion,” said Dan Tench from Olswang. A group has been formed on Facebook by safari users, called Safari Users Against Google’s Secret Tracking.