Google has agreed to pay $17 million to settle claims brought forth by 37 states and Washington, DC that the search engine company altered cookies to track users in the Safari browser.
According to Reuters, under the terms of the deal, Google has not admitted any wrongdoing, but has agreed not to use the type of code that can stealthily track a user’s browsing habits. Additionally, it will be responsible for helping to educate consumers on the impact of cookies for the next five years — essentially a slap on the wrist for the company that made $14.89 billion in revenue last quarter.
It was alleged that Google was circumventing the privacy settings on Safari for customers with altered cookies. As part of this effort, the browser wasn’t able to detect it and wasn’t able to block it from tracking activity.
➤ Google to pay $17 million to settle states’ Safari probe (Reuters)
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