Google Must Face $5 Billion Lawsuit Over Tracking Private Internet Use, Judge Rules (cnet.com) 90
"Google failed to win dismissal of a lawsuit alleging it collects users' data on internet activity even when they browse in a browser's private incognito mode," reports CNET:
The lawsuit, filed in June, alleges Google violates wiretapping and privacy laws by continuing to "intercept, track, and collect communications" even when people use Chrome's incognito mode and other private web browser modes. A federal judge on Friday denied the tech giant's request for dismissal of the lawsuit, which seeks class action status. "The court concludes that Google did not notify users that Google engages in the alleged data collection while the user is in private browsing mode," US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, wrote in her ruling...
The lawsuit, which seeks at least $5 billion from Google and its parent company, Alphabet, alleges the company surreptitiously collects data through Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager, website plug-ins and other applications, including mobile apps.
Google "cannot continue to engage in the covert and unauthorized data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone," the complaint said.
Reuters reported in June that the proposed class action likely includes "millions" of Chrome users who had tried browsing the internet in a private mode — and seeks $5,000 damages per user "or three times actual damages, whichever is greater, for violations of federal wiretapping and California privacy laws."
The lawsuit, which seeks at least $5 billion from Google and its parent company, Alphabet, alleges the company surreptitiously collects data through Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager, website plug-ins and other applications, including mobile apps.
Google "cannot continue to engage in the covert and unauthorized data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone," the complaint said.
Reuters reported in June that the proposed class action likely includes "millions" of Chrome users who had tried browsing the internet in a private mode — and seeks $5,000 damages per user "or three times actual damages, whichever is greater, for violations of federal wiretapping and California privacy laws."
"You’ve gone incognito" (Score:4, Informative)
Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity. However, downloads and bookmarks will be saved.
Chrome won’t save the following information:
Your browsing history
Cookies and site data
Information entered in forms
Your activity might still be visible to:
Websites you visit
Your employer or school
Your internet service provider
They don't say they stop tracking you. I never assumed they did. But for the average user, I guess this is pretty sneaky.
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Your activity might still be visible to: Websites you visit Your employer or school Your internet service provider
Well, they didn't mention Google in that list...
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The critical factor in that list is "Chrome won’t save the following information" and Chrome doesn't save it. That disclose does not say "Google" won't do this.
No mention is made here of what servers are doing with the data. That is because the browser has ZERO control over what the servers do with the data.
So what is missing here? A statement that servers are not a part of the client so the client has no control over them? That seems more like an educational exercise than a disclosure.
Google will continue tracking your activity (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure that's still a partial disclosure but it's a start.
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Why does Chrome need to disclose
Because the wording may have been misleading, either intentionally or negligently. And that's what the courts are explicitly for in this type of case - to decide such things.
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Oops, forgot this:
Block third-party cookies
When on, sites can't use cookies that track you across the web. Features on some sites may break.
Even sneakier.
Re:"You’ve gone incognito" (Score:4, Insightful)
Ha! Trying to do much of anything on the web nowadays breaks if you enable the privacy tools that are available to you.
I just cleaned out cookies that have been lurking on my system for over a year. Instagram? WTH! I don't have an account there and can't do anything on that site without one but they've got effin' cookies on my system.
Chrome, Firefox could make it easier to block cookies by allowing you to highlight the list of sites whose cookies you're removed from your browser and paste them into the "block cookies from these sites" dialog. Instead you keep making us remove them over, and over, and over, ... How about it Google, Mozilla?
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Think about this a minute. Tracking you and selling your data without any sort of actual meeting of minds or agreement is how they make billions. They aren't going to allow or enable ANY technology which actually succeeds in preventing them from collecting data you don't want to give.
The big lie is that these services couldn't exist without that collection, it is false, these services are the ones offering this level of invasion and targetting. People bought ads before they starting doing it and would still
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How about instead https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nosc... [duckduckgo.com] (double plus there duckduckgo and noscript) and block doubleclick.net and googleanalytics and every single advertising script. I also use https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb... [duckduckgo.com] (hint duckduckgo and privacy badger).
If you do not boycott Google, they will not change, kill your Gmail address and block all incoming GMail addresses, get some privacy back in your email. Stop using Google search and use https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb... [duckduckgo.com] and spread it around, every tim
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Firefox is going to start auto removing cookies that haven't been accessed for a few months. That's probably a better solution than making the user do manual labour.
If you want to protect yourself further there is an add-on called Cookie Autodelete. Basically you whitelist sites you want to keep cookies from, with a simple 2 click method. Everything else gets deleted when you navigate away from the site.
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This is expected behavior, Incognito only stops the BROWSER from collecting data about you, it has no impact on what the SERVER is doing. Do people not understand there are two pieces in play here? If you use Bing when in Incognito mode, Microsoft is still going to collect your IP and search queries. That's because those are processed at the server and the browser has zero control over that.
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Tor should help (Score:2)
Tor should help to get a true incognito mode; At least the packets are delivered through the onion router.
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You and I understand that. But some people do not, or are not thinking it through, and Google (and presumably Microsoft, et al.) is not explicitly clarifying that for those people.
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It is not defending, I simply stated how the software works. It has worked this way since the day Incognito mode was created. Apple Safari Private Browsing has to work the same way, It is simply not possible for the browser to force the servers to stop collecting data.
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The only technical solution I know that could achieve this would be to build a massive VPN and then force the browser traffic for the entire world through that VPN and anonymize it. Of course the performance of that would be pretty terrible and it would cost a fortune to run it. And still the owner of that VPN would be able to see everything. This is not something that can be addressed in a browser, it's just not how browsers work.
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You are right, we shoudl all give up, let priests rape kids, why bother with police at all.
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If you want the servers to quit tracking you, talk to the people that own the servers. When you turned on Chrome Incognito mode the browser (client) quit storing data. It is impossible for the browser to control what the servers are doing with the data.
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Being that the browser, and the vast majority of the trackers, are in fact made by the same people. they ARE "talk(ing) to the people that own the servers".
They explicitly told that company they didn't want to be tracked (by enabling incognito mode), and yet that very same company that they told not to track them is continuing to do so, only using different tools. This might be a completely different issue if they enabled Chrome incognito mode, and then sued Facebook for still tracking them, as the 2 are di
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Incognito mode has never claimed it makes the web stop tracking you and it could not implement it since it is technically impossible to do. Incognito has has only said Chrome will stop storing your data you which it does correctly implement. Note that Chrome != Google. Chrome is one of many products made by Google, it is not synonymous with Google the company.
If you want to pass a law forcing severs to stop tracking, go ahead. But that is a technical impossibility for a BROWSER to implement since the code d
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ans cigarettes never said they didnt cause cancer, please remind me what happened there ?
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I can't speak for GP, but perhaps because they live in *reality*, maybe because they speak *truth* rather than making shit up because they think it'll make one person or the other look good or bad.
Perhaps they even realize that you don't fix a problem by lying about it. You fix a problem by clearly identifying exactly what the problem is, then coming up with a fix that addresses the actual problem.
When you lie about what the problem is, in order to make someone look bad, the best you can hope for is that so
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Every single time you open an incognito tab it tells you - incognito mode means other people using the same computer won't see your history. It does not mean web sites can't track you. It does not mean your ISP can't can't track you. It does not mean your employer can't track you.
If someone uses incognito mode regularly, they've been informed of that hundreds or thousands of times.
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Thats irrelevant, thats not how laws work in terms of consumer rights. Its about whata the public believes they were told, not what a group of lawyers word weaseled into some text.
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Alrighty, if I'm understanding you correctly, it's what you believe that matters. What DO you believe when you read this?:
--
your activity might be visible to:
* websites you visit
* your employer or school
* your internet service provider
--
Do YOU believe that means "your activity will not be visible to web sites you visit"?
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Nothing lawyer about it, I asked what YOU think when YOU read the message. The message that appears every time is:
--
your activity might be visible to:
* websites you visit
* your employer or school
* your internet service provider
--
You said what matters is what you think when you read that.
So what do you think? Do you think that means "I'm totally hidden, nobody can see what I'm doing"?
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They haven't LOST the lawsuit (Score:2)
That's an argument they may want to use during the hearings.
The hearings, that will now be held — despite their attempts to dismiss the lawsuit from the get-go. Failed attempts. TFA is about that failure, nothing else...
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Your activity might still be visible to:
Websites you visit
Your employer or school
Your internet service provider
What they fail to mention is that your activity might still be visible to Google thanks to Google Analytics and other technologies embedded in sites you visit.
Google could quite easily block their own analytics when Chrome enters Incognito Mode.
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Your activity might still be visible to:
Websites you visit
Your employer or school
Your internet service provider
What they fail to mention is that your activity might still be visible to Google thanks to Google Analytics and other technologies embedded in sites you visit.
Google could quite easily block their own analytics when Chrome enters Incognito Mode.
You mean sites I visit can still see my information and give it to google! If only it warned me on the first page when I go incognito!
And no, Google can't fucking tell when you go incognito you dumbass, there is nothing the browser sends out saying "I'm incognito, look at me!", that would be even WORSE for privacy if it would. Because then anyone else could also. I'm sure governments would LOVE being able to track people who are trying to cover what they are doing even easier.
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Incognito mode is for leaving no trace on the local computer you're using.
Online trackers can and will keep working.
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If this was the Soviets what would the US gov do ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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What google does would have been the Stasi's [wikipedia.org] wet dream. Do you remember, a few years ago, that we were being told how evil the Stasi was and now much more is being done by Google, Facebook and our own national intelligence agencies.
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Whatever happened to due process and equality for all under the law
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Imagine if the websites you visit, referenced Soviet resources (javascript, fonts, iframes, etc) a tenth as much as they reference Google. I might ask you why you load so many seeming Soviet-leaning websites. But when we load from Google, nobody seems to mind.
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How about you try and stay classy and actually address the article and not me for simply raising a question. I guess you dont comprehend the meaning of double standards.
We are talking about G.
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You mean the Soviet Union that evaporated almost 30 years ago?
It would have been very impressive to track even a hundredth as well as Google using 1990 technology.
Perhaps it could have worked as a percent of total traffic - after all gopher footprints are pretty small.
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Incognito mode (Score:4, Interesting)
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I said before and will say it against. Incognito mode was invented as an anti trust monopolistic thing to kill other adveritisers. Incog mode basically makes everyone start from scratch in building a profile of the user, and G has a SERIOUS advantage here, which means they will win the ad money. It has nothing to do with privacy of the user.
Private browsing was introduced by Apple's Safari in April 2005, three and a half years before Google "invented" it (reference [wikipedia.org]).
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Incognito mode (Score:1)
Chrome is faithful to 1) and 2). What happens server side is another story, and Chrome has no control of what do the servers. If a server sends a page that runs google-analytics code, of course the code will normally run in the browser, and Chrome is not (and should not) prevent it to run. The important point is that in incognito mode, go
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I do fully understand the technical aspect about how it DOES work, but that doesn't mean that is the way it SHOULD work.
You love the technicality, but in reality the user told Google the company not to track them, explicitly, by enabling incognito mode in the Google made browser. Google the company then continued to track them using different methods. It's the exact same company that was explicitly told by the user not to do the thing they continue to do.
The fact that the browser wasn't designed to convey t
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You love the technicality
Indeed.
Google the company then continued to track them using different methods
Technicality, please. What methods, specifically?
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Technicality, please. What methods, specifically?
Google continued to track the user using server side means instead of browser based means.
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If you're completely oblivious to the entire tracking industry and their methods tracking people across sites through server side scripts, I'm not sure I can do enough educating for you in 1 slashdot post.
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Why pretend that its not true. Whats the bet that 90% or more people would say thats what it meant ?
Typical american whore, no honour and no word, and will screw anyone for a dollar.
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Precisely friend, this is the problem with America, they dont understand what it means to follow the spirit of the word, everything is about being a two face lying sc
Chain of events (Score:1)
First incognito mode was just there as a convenient way to erase your browser history, then it added a few more anti-tracking capabilities, and now it is enshrined into law in some kind of way. Law is weird.
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No you are looking at this completely the wrong way around. You fail to see the motivation for Google to introduce such a thing in the first
Safari was the browser that introduced private browsing first. Chrome and Firefox were just copycats (to be clear, copying was good).
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No, the problem is that they lied about it.
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I did not say there is any problem here.
only five ? (Score:3)
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Justice is quite happy to obliterate the economy. They do it all the time, just look at the massive damage patent trolls continually do to the economy.
What Justice tries to do is avoid jeopardizing large mega-corporations with massive lobbying power who have enough "speech" (money and power) to effectively cause any politician to win, or lose, any election.
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Justice is quite happy to obliterate the economy. They do it all the time, just look at the massive damage patent trolls continually do to the economy.
That affects mainly people, companies to a certain extent, but not much the whole economy.
What Justice tries to do is avoid jeopardizing large mega-corporations with massive lobbying power who have enough "speech" (money and power) to effectively cause any politician to win, or lose, any election.
Ouch, a lot of conspiracy theories in this. True or not, not sure, but where does Google stand in this? Isn't Google a "large mega-corporations with massive lobbying power"? In that case, wouldn't you contradict yourself?
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Google has yet to be actually punished in this case, so no contradiction at all.
Even if they are handed a fine, I am willing to bet that it will be insignificant in light of their revenues.
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Google is not the econpomy it may be big but its not th eentire economy in fact its actually a small fraction. Truth be told advertising hurts the economy its all built on lies, lies to the consumer, lies to the advertiser, its lies all around.
The disclosure is pretty clear: (Score:2)
If you are the kind of person who is at all equipped to understand the basic gist of web usage tracking, this should be enough to tell you that server-side tracking, by Google and many others, is still enabled (just like when browsing without incognito mode).
Case closed.
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So you're saying that Google are the kind of people who are not at all equipped to understand what users actually want when they explicitly tell the company not to track them?
The fact that the software doesn't work that way, or that the web doesn't work that way, in no way changes any legal obligation Google may have to respect the user's expressly stated wishes not to be tracked.
"case closed" indeed.
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Google cannot be responsible for people not reading the instructions and/of forming incorrect impressions.
Case indeed closed.
I just came here to say... (Score:2)
American intelligence agencies need that data (Score:3)
"intercept, track, and collect communications" - who does that sound like? American intelligence agencies.
I strongly suspect that Google is collecting this data at the direction of American intelligence agencies. Violating wiretapping and privacy laws is the least of their problems. I bet the US government pays this fine for Google..to the US government.
Real Incognito Mode (Score:2)
Seriously toss your computer and phone into a lake and run into the woods with no electronics, there that's actual Incognito. The reality is if you're online, you're going to leave a profile behind because sooner or later the servers that you reach out to need to know who and where you are to reach back. *sigh* All incognito does is leave less data on your computer and try to remove any identifying markers in the browser itself. It can't magically hide your connection. This lawsuit is frankly stupid.
In Scandinavia... (Score:2)
...Google makes it VERY clear that they keep on tracking you, even in inkognito mode.
The message every scandinavian will have on the screen, is that you will have to "Consent" to the use of tracking, Google says it's to avoid robots from abusing Google, but the truth is that they're very much tracking you, even when you are surfing inkognito.
Only way to truly surf inkognito is to NOT use google but duckduck.go and via TOR at the same time, otherwise - you're tracked no matter what.
And they don't even allow