
Google sued for 'clandestine tracking' of UK iPhone users' browsing data - nns
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/21/google-sued-tracking-44m-uk-iphone-users-browsing-data-apple-safari
======
bitcharmer
This is one of those things that make me very pessimistic about the future of
our civilisation.

Instead of empowering common folk and accelerating our potential as a species
what is happening is our thoughts, interests, fears, relationships and most
intimate secrets gradually become a commodity in the hands of a few powerful
companies.

The trend is clear and I am really fearful for my children's future.

It's really depressing to watch the world change into something many of
mankind's greatest thinkers feared the most.

~~~
sandov
Yeah, but whose fault is it? Big companies offering these abusive services or
the common folk's who agree to use these services without giving a fuck about
their personal information?

~~~
blub
That's not a new question:

* whose fault is it? Tobacco manufacturers' for making products which cause cancer, or the common folk's for agreeing to smoke cigarettes without "giving a fuck" about their health?

* whose fault is it? Pharma companies' for making drugs with terrible side-effects, or the common folk's for taking those drugs without "giving a fuck" about their health?

There are many examples, but in all of them the government stepped in and
stopped the abuse of the big companies, just like it must do for Google,
Facebook & co which take advantage of the common folk's inability to
understand the very complex mechanisms those companies designed to deceive
them.

Pretty simple.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Pharma companies don't intentionally make medicine which cause side effects.
It just happens to be hard to design medicines that don't given the complexity
of biological systems. I don't see how this claim is relevant to whatever
point you're making.

------
Sephr
What does "bypassed privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser" mean? Ignoring
the DNT header? Setting third party cookies? Something about ITP?

This article has practically no details about the actual accusation.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
> Specifically, Google used a bit of JavaScript code – the workaround – to
> bypass Safari’s default blocking of third-party cookies (set by domains
> other than those being visited) in order to allow sites within its
> DoubleClick ad network to track users.

[https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/11/30/google-sued-
over...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/11/30/google-sued-over-iphone-
safari-workaround-data-snooping/)

~~~
ams6110
While I don't condone bypassing a users intent, I'm struggling to see the
damage claim here. So some Safari users got more targeted ads than they would
otherwise have seen. Does that merit financial compensation?

~~~
jhayward
> So some Safari users got more targeted ads than they would otherwise have
> seen.

So, some users had their browsing habits illegally harvested, stored,
analyzed, and sold to an unknown number of parties for an unknown number of
purposes, many of them adverserial in nature to the well-being of the
individual. So what?

~~~
whydoineedthis
prove it. and when i say prove it - you actually need to show damage and harm
done, that's what the law requires. If you can't prove a single occurrence of
the "adverserial in nature to the well-being of the individual", then there is
no real grounds to sue on. legally speaking.

~~~
jononor
Buying things that are not needed harms the persons economy. And gambling
practically always a bad deal. Taking medicine that is not needed can be bad
for the individual.

~~~
sli
Before you get a response about personal responsibility and all that, everyone
should have the psychological side of marketing and advertising firmly in
mind. People are not in complete control of their responses to advertisements.

~~~
fixermark
... but from a legal standpoint, personal responsibility is basically a
cornerstone. We throw out a lot of legal fundamentals if we re-frame the
decision to purchase a product voluntarily as "the ads mind-controlled you."

There might be some precedent in the space (cigarette ad campaigns were
severely curtailed during the "Big Tobacco" crackdown in the US), but ads in
general? Good luck.

------
wgx
And no engineer at Google said “hey, should we be hacking our way around the
user’s privacy settings?”, or blew the whistle?

~~~
tintor
It only takes one or two unethical engineers to implement it, even if most of
engineers don't want to.

~~~
trendia
On a broader scale, the NSA had William Binney implement a way of vacumming up
data, but the system include Constitutional protections and required a warrant
to access.

Once it was implemented, the NSA took him off the project and put other people
on to remove the controls.

------
inetknght
> Google was fined $22.5m for the practice by the US Federal Trade Commission
> in 2012 and forced to pay $17m to 37 US states.

So it's the consumers who were violated. But were they compensated?

~~~
madeofpalk
One could make the argument that the State receiving the income from these
fines would go back to fund public services, benefiting consumers.

Additionally, the state pursuing issues like this helps 'keeps the bastards
honest' and prevents more consumers from being violated in the future. It's
like how a murderer going to jail doesn't result in the victims from being
compensated.

~~~
microcolonel
> _It 's like how a murderer going to jail doesn't result in the victims from
> being compensated._

Often there is a separate case for compensating the successors to the victims.

------
DannyBee
I'm pretty sure this is the same incident from

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-pays-17m-to-settle-
safa...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-pays-17m-to-settle-safari-
cookie-privacy-bypass-charge/)

(which is from 2013) just a lawsuit in a different country over the same set
of facts.

~~~
ggggtez
When I saw the headline, I knew it sounded familiar. Thanks.

------
nl
Everyone gets so outraged about this, and yet one glance on Stackoverflow
shows it was a common concern at the time:
[https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=Set+3rd+party+cookies+saf...](https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=Set+3rd+party+cookies+safari)

Not arguing that Google was right to do this, but some of the “pessimistic
about our civilisation” arguments on this page seem slightly overblown IMHO.

------
fortythirteen
And here I was, on HN last week, getting downvoted to oblivion for mentioning
that each Google embedded service is a cog in a much more nefarious machine.

It's getting like reddit around here, where the most controversial comments
about SV misdoings are usually the most objective.

------
kevin_thibedeau
Google doesn't need a cookie to track you. The real culprit is the multitude
of sites relying on javascript hosted by Google to do mundane things.

------
whydoineedthis
I feel like the UK parliament is creating ane enforcing archaic privacy rules
because they realized they can not compete on the technology front with US
companies. Their plan is literally to sue US companies in order to gain a
small footing/edge. I think what they are going to get is increasingly
blocked. China is looking way more open an profitable to do business in
comparitively.

~~~
ionised
This is that same tired, old accusation of protectionism in the UK and EU, and
it's totally baseless.

US tech giants are behaving unethically and in some cases illegally. As soon
as the countries in which they do business decide enough is enough, people
(Americans I assume) cry out about protectionism.

How about just follow the fucking law in the countries in which you do
business?

------
sqdbps
Another reason to scrap class-action lawsuits - other than they clog up the
courts with mostly frivolous claims seeking payoff and that lawyers get the
bulk of the winfall while dividing the scraps among their clients - it would
also do away with plaintiffs' lawyers overselling their cases and supplying
newspapers with a steady stream of clickbait.

~~~
zaksoup
Genuinely curious: what recourse exists for folks who aren't google-sized with
google-sized legal teams to push back against bad-faith/illegal actions like
this particular one. It seems clear that they acted against their users
interests, even if the legality has yet to be determined. Google's de-facto
monopoly on web advertising means that there's no other good option, though
(and it's not as easy to avoid 'all ads served by google' the way it is to,
say, stop buying Nike shoes because you don't like their business practices).

~~~
sqdbps
The relevant regulator not the courts. Also in this case there was no harm
done and certainly the plaintiffs can't prove any.

Google acknowledged the bug that was fixed back in early 2012!! this lawsuit
is a money grab, most of them are.

~~~
zaksoup
you didn't really answer my question, and it also seems like the claim that
there was no harm done is a bit specious, enough users to form a class
certainly seem to feel harmed.

~~~
sqdbps
Feeling harmed and actually being harmed are different things.

There is also something to be said about the general societal ill of feeling
entitled to compensation for the slightest of perceived harms.

~~~
abiox
> Feeling harmed and actually being harmed are different things.

this seems almost non-sequitur. either way, it is the court's purpose to
ascertain harm and any consequent penalties (if any).

~~~
zaksoup
Exactly this: If one group feels harmed and another group asserts that there
was no harm then the courts exist to solve this exact problem.

