Google has reached a $17 million settlement with 37 U.S. states and the District of Columbia over its unauthorized placement of cookies on devices running Apple’s Safari browser, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Monday.
The states accused Google of placing tracking on computers of Safari users when they visited sites in Google’s DoubleClick ad network in 2011 and 2012. The company in August 2012 also agreed to pay a $22.5 million civil penalty to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the largest penalty the agency had secured for a violation of one of its orders
“Consumers should be able to know whether there are other eyes surfing the web with them,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “By tracking millions of people without their knowledge, Google violated not only their privacy, but also their trust.”
Google said it was pleased to reach the settlement. “We work hard to get privacy right at Google and have taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple’s browsers,” a spokeswoman said by email.
Source : TechHive
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