Google is expected to pay a $22.5 million fine, the largest in the history of the Federal Trade Commission, for bypassing the privacy settings of users of the Safari web browser.
Google is “close” to the settlement terms, officials familiar with the deal told The Wall Street Journal. The FTC has charged Google of tricking the Safari browser into accepting an advertising “cookie” file that allowed the company to track people’s online activities, even if the user had disabled such tracking.
“The FTC is focused on a 2009 help center page,” Google said in a statement. “We have now changed that page and taken steps to remove the ad cookies.”
The search company maintains that the tracking of Safari users was inadvertent, and that there was no harm to consumers. The FTC believes, however, that Google violated the 20-year agreement it entered in with the FTC last October, where Google agreed not to misrepresent its privacy policy to consumers.
Google exploited a loophole in Safari, allowing an advertiser to place a cookie if the user interacted with an ad. Some ads placed by DoubleClick, a Google subsidiary, would send an invisible form to make it appear the user was interacting with the ad. This would prompt Safari to allow DoubleClick to install a temporary cookie on the user’s computer.
