Google and privacy policy in Internet Explorer

Shortly after it was revealed that Google uses a means to circumvent privacy protections in the Safari Web browser, Microsoft revealed that the Mountain View, California company has a similar practice in place with Internet Explorer (IE). Does this mean an end to privacy to consumers and internet users, and the start of total surveillance over all we do?

Microsoft shared its findings in a recent blog post (at blogs.msdn.com): “When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too? We’ve found that Google bypasses the P3P Privacy Protection feature in IE. The result is similar to the recent reports of Google’s circumvention of privacy protections in Apple’s Safari Web browser, even though the actual bypass mechanism Google uses is different.”

There is no doubt that the U.S. Congress and consumer/privacy groups will add this to their list of questions when Google is called to explain its behaviour to U.S. lawmakers.

As mentioned above, the case with Internet Explorer is not the first. Unfortunately, similar practices exist with Facebook and Microsoft itself in order to increase the effectiveness of their advertising services.