Google utilizes loophole in Safari to track users

by Costea Lestoc on February 17, 2012

Loopholes always involve unethical things. In the case of loopholes that are available in Safari, which is so prominently used in devices such as iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is being used to track users. Although it isn’t involving locations and such, it involves personal information which is tracking users web-browsing habit.

Safari has quite a good way of blocking tracking cookies which is available to many ads tracking system. Due to this, it frustrates a lot of ad networks simply because they have no way of knowing the browsing habit of the person. However, there is an exception as to the type of cookie that Safari accepts and it is those that the users interact with. Specifically speaking, these are forms that users usually use to login to websites.

Now, users don’t actually see any forms when the adds show up but nevertheless, Google had inserted a form tag inside its ads. Safari interprets this as the user interacting with the invisible form and thus saves the cookie. As a result, the cookie is saved and all of the users web-browsing habit is tracked for a period of up to 24 hours as that is the time whereby the cookie expires. Should you decide to block the tracking website, you can block doubleclick.net on your Safari privacy settings.

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