Leave Google Behind

Google caught circumventing default Safari user privacy protection settings

Another chapter in the Monster of Mountain View’s War on Privacy is now being written:

Google Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Web browser on their iPhones and computers—tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.

The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users. Safari, the most widely used browser on mobile devices, is designed to block such tracking by default.

Google disabled its code after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

Google would have no doubt been happy to continue exploiting the Safari loophole – which was discovered by Stanford grad student Jonathan Meyer – but it needed to contain the bad publicity, so it told the Journal it was removing the offending code. That hasn’t stopped privacy activists and consumer advocates from giving Google a well-deserved, harsh scolding.

“Google has clearly engaged in ‘unfair and deceptive’ practices,” said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director. “They have been lying about how people can protect their privacy in their instructions about how to opt out of receiving targeted advertising.”

“The original Google statement that users of Safari who have not changed their privacy settings ‘accomplishes the same thing as setting the opt-out cookie’ is a per se misrepresentation. Not only did the company know this not to be true, it took elaborate measures to circumvent the Safari privacy safeguards, and it benefited from the misrepresentations by the commercial value it surreptitiously obtained. The fact that Google removed the evidence and made it no longer available by means of a Google search (think about that for a moment) is an admission by the company as to its malfeasance,” EPIC’s Marc Rotenberg wrote in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission.

“Coming on the heels of Google’s controversial decision to tear down the privacy-protective walls between some of its other services, this is bad news for the company,” agreed staffers with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “It’s time for Google to acknowledge that it can do a better job of respecting the privacy of Web users. One way that Google can prove itself as a good actor in the online privacy debate is by providing meaningful ways for users to limit what data Google collects about them. Specifically, it’s time that Google’s third-party web servers start respecting Do Not Track requests, and time for Google to offer a built-in Do Not Track option.”

The problem, of course, is that Google isn’t interested in doing a better job of respecting the privacy of Web users. It’s trying to do away with the very idea. And unless users take a stand by choosing to stop doing business with Google – as we have – it may very well succeed.

GooSniff is for real: Google offers to pay users who agree to constant surveillance of all their Internet traffic through a little black box

What will be next? A test of facial recognition technology? The Monster of Mountain View is doing all it can to destroy user privacy as we know it. This is just the latest proof.

Google is working to collect information about Internet users that it can’t get from just monitoring its own browser, services, and Android devices. The company has set up a new program called Screenwise, which offers money to users who install a black box on their home network to “measure Internet use.” A smaller amount of money will go to those who install a browser extension on their computers that will do the same thing.

Google quietly started up the Screenwise data collection program Tuesday night, taking the e-mail addresses of people who are interested in “add[ing] a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them.” For their participation, Google offers the extension users a $5 Amazon gift card for signing up and another $5 gift card for every three months they stay with the program. Less publicly, Google also started looking for people who would install a piece of hardware on their network to do more extensive monitoring.

Daniel Brandt, who runs Google Watch, foresaw the eventuality of a device like this. In his satirical images gallery, he has a photo of a USB dongle called the GooSniff. It doesn’t exactly correspond to Google’s new black box for snooping, but it’s not far off.

Of course, this is a voluntary program. Unlike many of Google’s other spying activities, it’s opt-in. But that’s because it would be illegal for Google to forcibly install little black boxes in the home offices of every American household. To attract sheep – er, participants – Google is offering a small payout. The cost to them is small, and the potential payoff (in terms of the data collected) is huge.

The more data Google can collect, the better. That’s what they are after. And unless they are stopped, they will become a bigger threat to the privacy and security of millions of Americans than the National Security Agency.

Google to “revise” its privacy policies so that it can ramp up its spying and tracking

We hate to say, we told you so, but… we told you so!

In a move that could make it harder for Google users to remain anonymous, Google Inc. said it would start combining nearly all the information it has on its users.

This could mean, for instance, that when users search via Google, the company will use their activities on sister sites like Gmail and YouTube to influence those users’ search results. Google hasn’t done that before.

Google’s move—which was disclosed in a privacy policy that will take effect on March 1—is a sign of the fierce competition between Google and Facebook Inc. over personal data. Facebook has amassed an unprecedented amount of data about the lives of its more than 800 million members—information that is coveted by advertisers.

Years ago, Google began morphing from a search and advertising company into a tracking company that controls a vast treasure trove of information about people. This site, Leave Google Behind, was created as a response to the beginning of that metamorphosis. Since LGB’s founding almost three years ago, we have faithfully chronicled Google’s increasingly well-waged war on privacy, which the Monster of Mountain View seems determined to continue, one odious move at a time.

It should be obvious by now that many of Google’s offerings don’t directly generate revenue and have nothing to do with its core business. Consider Chrome, Google’s browser. Google doesn’t make money on Chrome. But it is able to use Chrome to track the web surfing habits of millions of people. Google made Chrome by taking freely available open source software, making some improvements, and adding a proprietary payload of spyware on top. That payload is distributed with each copy of Google Chrome. But of course, it is missing from community builds of Chromium, because Google has no interest in open-sourcing its spyware.

Chrome and other offerings are intended to expand Google’s reach, so the Monster of Mountain View knows more about everybody. Google’s own executives have admitted this. On multiple occasions.

“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions…They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next… We know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.“

- Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, August 14th, 2010

Fortunately, Google’s war on privacy is starting to receive more pushback. The European Union is weighing a strong new user data privacy law that companies like Google would be required to comply with. The current incarnation of the law has some particularly strong and useful provisions in it. Perhaps if Europe can act, it will help at least spark a conversation about something similar in the U.S.