It’s been roughly a month since Google was caught circumventing privacy protections in order to track user behavior on its sites.
Regulators worldwide have been busy in that time collecting data of their own.
From a report in the Wall Street Journal (paid subscribers only) this morning:
Regulators in the U.S. and European Union are investigating Google Inc. for bypassing the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple Inc.’s Safari Web browser, according to people familiar with the investigations. Google stopped the practice last month after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
[…]
In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission is examining whether Google’s actions violated last year’s legal settlement with the government in which Google pledged not to "misrepresent" its privacy practices to consumers, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The fine for violating the agreement is $16,000 per violation, per day. Because millions of people were affected, any fine could add up quickly, depending on how it is calculated. The FTC declined to comment.
A group of state attorneys general, including New York’s Eric Schneiderman and Connecticut’s George Jepsen, are also investigating Google’s circumvention of Safari’s privacy settings, according to people familiar with the investigation. State attorneys general can have the ability to levy fines of up to $5,000 per violation.
In Europe, the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, has added the Safari circumvention technique to its existing pan-European investigation into Google’s privacy-policy changes, according to a person close to the investigation.
There are hundreds of millions of users of mobile Safari, which is the default browser on every iPhone and iPad. At $16,000 per user per day for a practice that has gone on for several years, the fines could be gargantuan. Expect Google to settle quickly.
Ed Bott 