Google has teamed up with Facebook to circumvent Apple’s privacy safeguards in Safari and continue monitoring end-users, an allegation that is disputed by both parties.
Google and Facebook team up against Safari privacy rules
A group of attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Google in December 2020, alleging that the search engine was “engaging in market collusion to rig auctions.”
While the lawsuit primarily focuses on a Facebook-Google agreement to collaborate in online advertising rather than compete, it claims that the two technology giants are attempting to undermine Apple’s efforts to safeguard its users’ privacy.
The amended complaint, which was first published by The Register on October 22, builds on the original allegation in several areas, further demonstrating how Google may have attempted to undermine user privacy.
According to the file: “For example, Google and Facebook have integrated their software development kits (SDKs) so that Google can pass Facebook data for user ID cookie matching. They also coordinated with each other to harm publishers through the adoption of Unified Pricing rules.”
According to the claim Google and Facebook “have been working together to improve Facebook’s ability to recognize users using browsers with blocked cookies, on Apple devices, and on Apple’s Safari Browser. Thereby circumventing one Big Tech company’s efforts to compete by offering users better privacy.”
Safari has several privacy protection measures, such as Intelligent Tracking Protection 2.0 which was released in 2018.
