Google and a number of other online businesses have been criticised after taking advantage of ‘cookies’ that apparently bypassed the security settings in the Safari web browser used by Apple computers and iPhones. The Wall Street Journal reported that the specially-designed web code enabled users to be ‘tracked’ as they visited different web sites despite this type of monitoring being blocked as a default setting on the browser.
The code used by Google has now been disabled, with the internet company issuing a statement that referred to “known Safari functionality” and pointing out that the advertising cookies did not collect personal information. It says the option was only used for Google customers who had signed-in to their accounts.
[Source: WSJ.com]