Google may soon settle a suit brought against it by the Federal Trade Commission over charges that it intentionally circumvented Do Not Track settings for some Web users.
The company is set to pay the FTC about $22.5 million to settle the charges, which claim it went around the privacy settings in Apple's Safari Web browser, according to a report from the
Wall Street Journal. It would be the largest fine against a single company ever brought by the federal agency, and comes just six months after the Journal first reported the issue.
However, that amount is also relatively little to a company of Google's size and profitability, the report said. It's estimated that the company made the $22.5 million needed to cover the cost roughly every five hours over the course of last year.
Eduard Goodman, chief privacy officer for
Identity Theft 911, has a blog about the ways Web users might find their privacy violated in the course of their daily browsing, and what they can do to increase their personal protections.
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