{"id":43627,"date":"2012-02-17T12:36:51","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T10:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=43627"},"modified":"2012-02-17T12:38:10","modified_gmt":"2012-02-17T10:38:10","slug":"google-bypassed-apple-security-settings-says-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/43627-google-bypassed-apple-security-settings-says-report.html","title":{"rendered":"Google bypassed Apple security settings says report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google<\/a> and other online advertisers bypassed the privacy settings of an Apple<\/a> web browser on iPhones and computers in order to survey millions of users, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.<\/p>\n

The Journal said the companies used a special code that tricks Apple’s Safari software into letting them monitor the browsing habits of many users.<\/p>\n

Safari — the most widely used browser on mobile devices and the default browser on iPhones and Mac laptops — is designed to block such tracking by default, the Journal said.<\/p>\n

The Journal said Google disabled the code after the newspaper contacted it and that Google removed a message on its website saying users could rely on Safari to prevent the search giant from tracking them.<\/p>\n

It quoted Google as saying the Journal “mischaracterizes what happened and why.”<\/p>\n

“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 collect personal information.”<\/p>\n

The Journal quoted an Apple official as saying the company was “working to put a stop” to the circumvention of the privacy settings.<\/p>\n

The code was first spotted by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer and independently confirmed by Ashkan Soltani, a technical adviser to the Journal.<\/p>\n

Google and Apple could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google and other online advertisers bypassed the privacy settings of an Apple web browser on iPhones and computers in order to survey millions of users<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340871,"featured_media":25053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[36,605,167,985],"class_list":["post-43627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-active","tag-apple","tag-google","tag-safari"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340871"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43629,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43627\/revisions\/43629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}