Fck Google
2010: "Do no evil"
2019: "Do not get caught"
An American appeals court has nixed one of Google's original legal settlements over its infamous privacy-busting Safari Workaround. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal, based in Philadelphia, ordered a new hearing to take place over the 2017 payoff – $5.5m handed over to Google-backed privacy campaign groups. In an opinion (PDF) …
Even worse, they probably have a whole accounting division devoted to comparing the cost of hiding what they are doing vs. the cost of paying a fine or settlement vs. the money being made. This enables management to make easy A B C decisions with none of those pesky moral arguments getting in the way.
If the cost of trying not to get caught is higher than the potential fine, they don't even bother anymore.
There's a difference between a fine, a punishment arising out of criminal law, and compensation, which these settlements are supposed to be.
If somebody crashes into your car they may be fined for careless driving - a criminal offence. That's quite separate from your claiming on their insurance - a civil claim.
Since this was a civil matter, not criminal, we can't give those who did it jail time - so what are the other options?
In order for a individual to claim damages, they have to be able to demonstrate an ACTUAL damage, and putting a cookie on a browser doesn't constitute a monetary damage to the owner or user of the iphone. Even with treble damages, 3 x 0 remains 0 so there wouldn't be any money going to the individuals.
Without changes to the laws, or misuse of existing law ("honest services fraud" perhaps?) the only people getting any money are the lawyers.
I agree with the above statement, how would you demostrate you had suffered damage from a cookie being placed on your device, and since it was quite some time ago how would you go about proving it happened in the first place?
The article also has some contradicting information as it says Google figured out the work around in the early 2000s but then says it was used against iOS devices. There were no iOS devices in the early 2000s. iOS wasn't released until 2007 which I would hardly call early 2000s.
"putting a cookie on a browser doesn't constitute a monetary damage to the owner or user of the iphone."
They're trespassing on the phone. If someone were to trespass on your land by parking their car on your drive you'd probably feel you had cause to sue them for trespass. At the very least you're suffering damage in that if they'd asked for your agreement you could have charged rent and that amount has been lost to you. In this case they're occupying storage, processing on the phone and traffic on airtime. That's even before we get to the value of the data gathered. And that's only monetary damage which seems to be the only form you recognise. Maybe you don't consider the loss of privacy as a damage; why not?
I don't think the original post had the viewpoint that this was fine because no damages. I think the point they were trying to make is that it is hard to establish damages in a legal sense, a fact that did not seem to impress the poster. The trespassing and privacy rights are of course the important part for us users, but there isn't a clear way to say that they are worth a certain amount and therefore have those violations charged. That's why cases like these end up getting punitive damages rather than punitive damages and compensation for the value lost. I, like the original commentor and presumably you, would like to see the law fix that so we can get both.
"putting a cookie on a browser doesn't constitute a monetary damage to the owner or user of the iphone."
They're trespassing on the phone. If someone were to trespass on your land by parking their car on your drive you'd probably feel you had cause to sue them for trespass.
Ummm, trespassing? The cookie as designed more than 20 years ago, was setup as per RFC2109 to maintain HTTP sessions. It was understood at the time, if you didn't want to accept the "cookie" then you didn't go to that site.
Fast forward to today, and people insist on trespassing on some company's servers and don't want to accept a "cookie" in exchange. Since your phone is being used to travel to someone else's land. That is not trespassing onto your since your phone is being used to trespass.
This is more like "Doctor Syntax" has parked their car on on google's property and is trying to refuse to accept the "take-a-number" for standing in line. Though, not necessarily okay on Google's behalf, you might want to get your analogies straight.
(The reason why I can say this is the browser is moving from page to page, but the server is stationary.)
I beg to differ. I could go into an argument about whether a cookie can be constituted as an invasion, but I don't have to. Why not? The workaround involved in this legal matter isn't an RFC2109 cookie. Instead, it's a piece of javascript which Google claimed wasn't there. If we want to litigate the "trespass" point made by the original poster, I could argue that, since the code was unknown to the user and executed on their device rather than Google's servers, it is in fact trespass on the phone's system. Once again, however, I don't have to. The case against Google was not about trespassing in the legal sense. They lost the case, and so the legal system would agree that what they were doing was wrong. So I'm afraid I do not think any of your points are accurate.
We need more like this.. Do you think he can take on Equifax next?
With the 'Record Breaking'(tm) payout from Equifax, the FCC are having to backpedal and ask people not to select the $125, as too many people are selecting the $125, and the FCC have realised that $125*300 million is more than the fine of $700 million (of which, only $31 million is actually available for payout)
https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds/equifax-data-breach-settlement
Well, that's easy. Adjust the fine to [number of people who had their details released] * $125.
Let's face it, they don't even have to ask people to apply - there's plenty of lists of said users available on the Dark Web at very reasonable prices. They could simply add the cost of the list to the fine, job done.
Lovely Jubbly!