Last week we told you about how Google has evidently been working around the privacy settings on Apple’s Safari browser in order to track people as they move about the web. Google said it wasn’t a hack, it was just working within the established operating abilities of Safari (of course, robbing a bank is working within the physical confines of a bank, also. What? Who said that?! That’s outrageous!) Now, Microsoft says that Google is doing the same thing to Internet Explorer as well. The company says they looked into it after hearing about the Apple situation.
We’ve found that Google bypasses the P3P Privacy Protection feature in IE. The result is similar to the recent reports of Google’s circumvention of privacy protections in Apple’s Safari Web browser, even though the actual bypass mechanism Google uses is different.
On that page, there is also a long description of how this all actually works that will make your eyes glaze over. And that’s kind of the problem here. Whether you believe what Google is doing is fair or unfair, the tech talk on this story is just enormous and hard to bear. That may end up stopping people from really understanding the weight of the situation.
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
