Google's iPhone Tracking (Bypassed Apple Browser Settings for Guarding Privacy)

[Roland99]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225380456599176.html

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.

Suuuuure they did.


--Roland99 (who's glad he just has a "dumb" phone)

[Kelvin Mace]

1. Class action suits to begin in

3...2...1....

[caseymoz]

6. Not so fast. Read the "Terms of Service" first.

Is there an Arbitration Clause in it?

[Bonhomme Richard]

2. Google....do no evil? n/t

[jberryhill]

3. The phone company used to do the same thing with landlines

Back before cellphones, the location of EVERY phone user was known!

They even published a book that had the address of every phone in it!

[DCKit]

5. Those bastards!!!! nt

[saras]

9. No it wasn't. They had NO IDEA who used a phone.

A local college house, on the corner of, let's say, Carl Avenue and Jones Road, had a phone registered as Carl Jones' name, for a couple of decades. Being a college house, it was used by a number of people and visited by many more. As long as the bill was paid on time...

There's a giant difference between having your home address known, which it is anyways for a long list of legal reasons, and having a device that you carry around all the time track your location AND give others access to your conversations, even ones you may be having with the phone "turned off".

I'll support personal tracking when we have an utterly uncorruptible government and an internationally supported organization like a cross between Wikileaks, Amnesty International, and the United States military, that has the brute strength necessary to protect whistleblowers from persecution, even if that means blocking an entire government and military.

Until then, citizens NEED the right to remain anonymous.

[boppers]

11. face+palm

"A local college house, on the corner of, let's say, Carl Avenue and Jones Road, had a phone registered as Carl Jones' name, for a couple of decades. Being a college house, it was used by a number of people and visited by many more. As long as the bill was paid on time... "

..Just like they have no idea *who* is using a computer. It's just the computer at a local college house, or the cell phone that people pass around.

[Roland99]

12. Who passes around an iPhone?

[boppers]

14. The same people who shared a phone.

Er, wait, that's the same thing. Maybe not to you or I, maybe we both remember a "portable phone" as something precious, valuable, unique.... but to kids these days, it's like sharing a bus or car. It has no value, no cachet.

[jberryhill]

13. Pre-paid cell phone bought with cash

Problem solved.

The bottom line here is that (1) the telephone network HAS to have some idea of where you are, because a cellular phone has to make a connection to the nearest tower - it's inherent in the system, and (2) the notion that someone is going to use Google services to do things like "find the nearest restaurant" without knowing where you are is simply foolish. Google mobile search results use your location in order to provide results that are relevant to where you are. If you live in a place like Wilmington, DE, it is a great thing to avoid search results relevant to people in Wilmington, NC.

[onehandle]

4. Google: Selling your every move to Chinese 'marketers', 24/7. Don't use their 'free' services...

...don't click on their ads.

Google 2012 = Microsoft 1990s

[onehandle]

7. Additionally, if you are an Android or Chrome user, just imagine what they do with your data.

They see, scan, and analyze your every tap, keystroke, and swipe.

[JBoy]

8. I loved that cheezy video.

Sent it to a couple of Gmail users I know.

[boppers]

10. Tech idiots make my brain hurt.

Unfortunately, there's no shortage of them.