Google tracked iPhones, bypassing Apple browser privacy settings

Google and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple'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.

The Google code was spotted by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer and
independently confirmed by a technical adviser to the Journal, Ashkan
Soltani, who found that ads on 22 of the top 100 websites installed the
Google tracking code on a test computer, and ads on 23 sites installed
it on an iPhone browser.

The technique reaches far beyond those websites, however, because
once the coding was activated, it could enable Google tracking across
the vast majority of websites. Three other online-ad companies were
found using similar techniques: Vibrant Media Inc., WPP PLC's Media
Innovation Group LLC and Gannett Co.'s PointRoll Inc.

In Google's case, the findings appeared to contradict some of
Google's own instructions to Safari users on how to avoid tracking.
Until recently, one Google site told Safari users they could rely on
Safari's privacy to prevent tracking by Google. Google removed that language from the site Tuesday night.

In a statement, Google said: "The Journal mischaracterizes what
happened and why. We used known Safari functionality to provide features
that signed-in Google users had enabled. It's important to stress that
these advertising cookies do not store personal information."

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