Privacy spat puts Google within the crosshairs

Privacy advocates, lawyers and robust rival Microsoft are piling on Google on for sidestepping web browsing software to tailor ads for folk signed into its online services.

The California-based Internet giant continued to staunchly defend itself meanwhile against accusations that it had put profit previous to privacy.

Controversy ignited last week after it was revealed that Google ad-targeting "cookies" bypassed track-blocking software on Apple's Web browser for iPhones and computers was fanned by Microsoft saying Internet Explorer was likewise duped.

A suit was filed on Tuesday, local time, in US federal court demanding Google pay unspecified damages for violating the privacy of millions of folks, and potentially national anti-wiretapping law.

Some researchers, however, said lashing out at Google did little to unravel a contradiction underpinning the complex situation - people want free online services that know them but web surfing that is still anonymous.

Snippets of code called "cookies" from Google and 3 online ad specialty firms slipped past tracker-blocking safeguards on Apple's Safari browser, Stanford University graduate student Jonathan Mayer said Friday in a blog post.

Microsoft said that a check showed that Google was bypassing anti-tracking mechanisms built into the Redmond, Washington-based technology titan's Internet Explorer (IE) web browsing software.

"Google is employing similar the way to get across the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies," IE corporate vice chairman Dean Hachamovitch said in a blog post.

"Given this real-world behaviour, we're investigating what additional changes to make to our products," he said.

Google fired back at Microsoft, saying that the corporate has known for years that the IE cookie blocking technique thwarted the functionality of contemporary websites akin to Facebook and Amazon and that bypassing it was common practice.

"In place of fixing (a) P3P loophole in IE that Facebook and Amazon exploited...Microsoft did nothing," privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian said in a Twitter post, bearing on IE's way of getting cookies identify themselves.

"Now they complain after Google uses it."

Researcher Lauren Weinstein in a post at social network Google+ talked about Microsoft's complaint as seeming "disingenuous at best, and definitely isn't helping to maneuver the ball usefully forward regarding these complex issues."

Whether calculated or innocent, Google's sidestepping of privacy features on browsers raised alarms with consumer rights groups and has already prompted a choice for an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Google discontinued use of the offending cookies in Safari browsers after Mayer's findings went public, and characterized the placement as an unintended side-effect of an effort to safeguard online privacy.

Google last year began using cookies in Safari browsers to let people signed into Google accounts get personalized services, together with with the ability to "+1" ads or other online content as likeable for friends at its online social network.

The plan was purportedly to supply users personalization requested while disclosing no details about them to Google-owned ad specialty firm DoubleClick.

Google reportedly didn't realize was the presence of the cookies opened Safari browser doors to a slew of DoubleClick ad tracking cookies, which might otherwise had been rejected.

"The Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set at the browser," the California company said in a released statement.

"We didn't anticipate that this will happen, and we've started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers," it continued.

Safari is the foremost typical browser on mobile devices and the default browser on iPhones and Macintosh computers. The Apple browsers are pre-set to dam tracking cookies.

- AFP