News

Google hit with $22.5 million fine for security violations

America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued its largest fine ever, to Google, for an FTC violation. Google has agreed to pay a $22.5 million fine over acccusations that they placed tracking cookies on the computers of Safari browser users that visited Google advertising partner websites for several months in 2011 and 2012.

The problem arises from the fact Google told Safari users they would automatically be excluded from such tracking because Safari’s default settings supposedly prohibited it on Macs, iPhones and iPads. Thus Safari users believed they had automatically been opted out of cookie tracking, yet they hadn’t.

The commission ultimately determined that by doing this, the search giant had violated an October 2011 settlement which banned them from misrepresenting the extent to which consumers can control the collection of their information.

“The record setting penalty in this matter sends a clear message to all companies under an FTC privacy order,” said Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC. “No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place.”

Google now has the job of removing these Ad cookies in compliance with FTC regulations. $22.5 million may seem like a lot, but for a company who posted a $2.8 billion profit in the last quarter that ended June 30, we don’t expect they will be too unhappy.

Source

Ryan Martin

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 Possible Price Revealed

According to a new report, the GeForce RTX 5090 GPU will be very expensive. It…

9 hours ago

AMD Krackan Processor with 6 Zen 5 and Zen 5c Cores for Budget AI Laptops Leaked

A new AMD processor in the form of an engineering model has been leaked in…

9 hours ago

SK Hynix Begins Production of First 321-Layer NAND Chips

SK Hynix has claimed to be the first company to mass-produce 321-layer NAND memory chips.…

9 hours ago

Trust Gaming GXT 609 Zoxa 2.0 PC Speakers

SOUNDS GREAT – Full stereo sound (12W peak power) gives your setup a booming audio…

14 hours ago

PowerA Wired Controller for Nintendo Switch

Special Edition Yoshi design Ergonomic controller shape with Nintendo Switch button layout Detachable 10ft (3m)…

14 hours ago

Logitech G Saitek PRO Flight Rudder Pedals

Fluid Motion: These flight rudder pedals are smooth and accurate that enable precise control over…

14 hours ago