Google and other advertising companies have been found to be bypassing the privacy settings of Apple's Safari browser to place cookies for better ad targeting, the Wall Street Journal reports. The companies used code that tricks the Safari software into letting them monitor users. Safari is designed to block such tracking by default. Google disabled its code after being contacted by the paper and said the cookies do not collect any personal information. The Google code was spotted by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer and independently confirmed by a technical adviser to the WSJ, Ashkan Soltani, who found that ads on 22 of the top 100 websites installed the Google cookie on a test computer, and ads on 23 sites installed it on an iPhone browser. Once the cookie was activated, it could enable Google tracking across the vast majority of websites. Three other online-ad companies were found using similar techniques: Vibrant Media, WPP's Media Innovation Group and Gannett's PointRoll. In Google's case, the findings appeared to contradict some of Google's own information to Safari users on how to avoid tracking. Until recently, one Google site told Safari users they could rely on Safari's privacy settings to prevent tracking by Google. Google removed that language from the site last week. The issue has raised questions from US congressmen, who have asked the FTC to investigate whether the practice is in violation of Google's earlier settlement of privacy issues with the regulator.
