BUSTED: Google Caught Secretly Hacking Apple Software To Track Apple iPhone and Mac U

might be a repost
http://www.businessinsider.com/goog...l&utm_term=&utm_content=1&utm_campaign=recirc

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...25380456599176.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

 

I wonder if Apple or OSX users will be taking any kind of legal action.

 

No room in this world honest people.

 

Ok, while I may not be the usual person to defend Google, there's a lot of nonsense in both those articles. The former having an extremely sensationalist title, and the latter simply lacking any information whatsoever.

I recommend this article: http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/17/2804095/google-safari-security-cookies

Firstly, let's note the title: Google and others caught circumventing Safari and Mobile Safari privacy restrictions

Far more accurate, now to bring in a few points.

In simple terms, Apple is blocking 3rd party cookies by default.

In simple terms, the author has read this code, freely readable by anyone at any point in time (not 'secretive' as implied in the OP's links), and figured that Google is using it maliciously. You can call this as evil as you want, it is really. But it certainly isn't "hacking Apple software". This exploit is known, as noted, since 2010, and has STILL not been fixed.

Very suspicious, but let's keep reading...

So they are using it to bring functionality to Safari browsers already present when using other browsers, not to track users.

Here is a full statement by Google:

Is it just me, or has the WSJ found a new taste for weekly bash Google topics? I mean, let's not forget that Apple is now planning on charging its users for a yearly service pack, then invaliding 4 year old hardware all for a new version which has new features that nearly all stem from Windows 8 ideas. Instead, they could be fixing 2 year old vulnerabilities.

 

As expected, Microsoft won't miss this opportunity: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-blasts-google-for-tracking-safari-users

But they are correct in saying:

 

I second that. This article is completely blowing the situation out of proportion. They didn't hack anything, all they did was enable "features" that required cookies that were being blocked. They quite creatively worked around a default that has a annoyed many people I know (who are not tech literate enough to disable it).

 

WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch and Google aren't BFF, most recently over SOPA. Of course, ownership of a newspaper shouldn't determine editorial policy but ...

 

I read this differently than others do. This statement by Google of "We didn't anticipate this would happen" is different than saying "we didn't know this was happening". The former just states that Google did not anticipate their method would allow the cookies. That is much different than saying they did anything to stop it once they found out. I doubt Google is so naive about their advertising methods that they had no idea this was going on.

 

Google "accidentally" tracking Safari

Original study research source

news article write up

 

MSFT going after goog for the same thing, affected IE

 

Amusing. So Firefox and Opera are the only main browsers where no means no.

 

Did you forget about Chrome?

 

Yeah, I'm sure Google isn't spying on anyone using Chrome.

 

Not really. Chromium (and presumably Chrome?) allows cookies from a very small amount of domains even though third party AND first party cookies are completely disallowed. This is without any added exceptions either.

So far I've observed this with Amazon, Blekko, Youtube, Yippy, Cluuz and Ecosia (search engines), and Newegg. It's not every time I go onto these sites, and I'm not talking about logging into an account. I mean just entering the website. Also, recently I've been messing with a lot of different search engines. These search engines and many other sites I've noticed, from Amazon again to Tinypic to Wordpress all add themselves to the available search engines in the browser Preferences. This isn't cleared on exit or any other way besides manually removing them.

I also have Chromium set to delete cookies and other cached stuff on exit. This does get rid of those rouge cookies but for people who don't do that, they're accruing cookies and being tracked by them when they're explicitly under the impression that they've disable this mechanism.

Not like it makes anything concrete, but here's what Amazon and the Ecosia search engine gave me lately. Amazon's expires in 2036 and the other is literally called TRACKID. One more thing to ask Mike West about.
http://i43.tinypic.com/2a5cg1k.png
http://i44.tinypic.com/29w03mb.png

Can anyone else confirm this in Chrome, Iron or other variants? I only started paying attention to it rather recently.