lies
google love us
Google is reportedly set to cough up a piddly penalty payment of $22.5m to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle its sneaky bypassing of the default privacy settings of Apple's Safari browser. It was revealed by the Wall Street Journal in February this year that Google, Vibrant Media Inc, WPP PLC's Media Innovation …
Agreed, and the worst part about it (IMO) is that hardly anyone seems to care. One could imagine that whenever such huge fines are being charged something pretty heavy is going wrong.
However; the figures are often so extremely huge and Google usually has hardly any problem coughing it all up that it seems to be totally losing its symbolic value as well.
"Google gets fine, Google pays fine, what was that?".
btw; this isn't something only applicable to Google; Microsoft has performed the same feasts and more that often the same can be said about other multi-billion companies.
Right on cue there! that's chicken feed to what they get in return for what should be 'our private data' obviously sold for a hefty return. Re: statement by the WSJ, Google racks up sales of over $20m roughly every five hours.
Typical Google board meeting: on todays agenda we have 'Spying, Privacy breaching cost offsets' [show of hands to breach privacy of our user base? raise your hand; all say [I] for additional pay bonus!
On a serious note: take your security n privacy into your own hands, block all that crap out: with host file edits, block-lists/filters, ABE custom rule sets. the 'Do not track' setting in your browser won't stop tracking either.
They're using bypassing methods either in .js, cookies, php logging etc.
We've even got super cookies now that really never get deleted, they stay hidden & can be called upon even after deletion :-( I've been researching nefarious cookie syncing & ever/super cookies for almost 2 years, with some very eye opening results. The webs playing dirtier based on our use of ad blockers. They've gotta get one up on us.
.. until such violations are in CRIMINAL law. The moment one of the suits has to consider jailtime, even if it's only a day per breach they will start paying attention. Otherwise it's just the cost of ignoring the law doing business and exactly zip will change after a penalty.
I have the same expectation of Facebook - I just discovered something which is a criminal offence with a per-instance fine which is only in the 4 digit range. However, at the volume that this takes place it'll amount to quite a few million, so now the challenge is to find a lawyer who leaves something for me after the frag fest called class action suit..