News: Google responds to accusations over cookie bypass in Safari and Internet Explorer browsers

A few days of a report by the Wall Street Journal that Google, Facebook and other websites are trying to bypass the cookie restrictions in Apple’s Safari and Mobile Safari web browsers, Microsoft now claims that Google is trying something similar with their Internet Explorer.

Microsoft claims that Google is improperly representing its cookies, using a non standard P3P cookie policy statement. It says that ‘Google’s P3P policy is actually a statement that is not a P3P policy’, which allows Google cookies to pass through unblocked.

Reacting to accusations over cookies in Safari, Google has said that it made a mistake with how Safari was asked to handle cookies and that its advertising cookies do not collect personal information. It also claims that users of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome were not affected. Although, this claim has now been suspected.

Microsoft has had an active role in stirring up controversy about Google’s behavior in recent weeks. It was quick to ding Google and Apple following the Safari revelations,  promoting their Internet Explorer and claiming that ‘the Tracking Protection in IE9 is recognized as some of the strongest privacy protection in the industry.’ However, that system needs to be turned on. If not, Google can bypass cookie preferences with a single manipulation of WC’s P3P standard (the default protection). Microsoft has asked Google to effectively use the P3P policy standard, but alongside, it is prompting users to start using the optional Tracking Protection feature.