Ondrej Holzman After two years, the investigation into Google, which has agreed to settle with 37 US states and the District of Columbia for secretly tracking users of the mobile web browser Safari, is ending. Google will pay $17 million.
The settlement was announced Monday, ending a long-running lawsuit in which nearly four dozen US states accused Google of violating the privacy of Safari users, in which the Android maker placed special digital files, or "cookies," that could be used to track users. For example, he targeted advertising more simply.
Although Safari on iOS devices automatically blocks third-party cookies, it allows the storage of those initiated by the user himself. Google bypassed Safari settings in this way and tracked users in this way from June 2011 to February 2012.
Nevertheless, Google did not admit to doing anything wrong in the agreement just concluded. He just assured that he had removed his advertising cookies, which did not collect any personal data, from his browsers.
Google already took the initiative last August will pay $22 million to settle charges brought by the US Federal Trade Commission. Now he has to pay another 17 million dollars, but how he remarked John Gruber, it could hardly hurt the Mountain View giant more significantly. They earn $17 million in Google in less than two hours.
