Microsoft has accused Google of bypassing Internet Explorer users' privacy settings. This follows the recent reports of Google's alleged tracking of Apple's Safari browser users.

Microsoft's corporate vice-president for Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, posted a blog yesterday in which he says: “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 discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies.”

Hachamovitch says Google has been found to be bypassing 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.”

Google shot back at its competitor, calling Microsoft's policy “widely non-operational”, citing a report that showed over 11 000 Web sites were not issuing valid P3P policies as requested by Microsoft.

Out of date

“Microsoft uses a 'self-declaration' protocol (known as 'P3P') dating from 2002, under which Microsoft asks Web sites to represent their privacy practices in machine-readable form,” said a statement from Google.

“It is well-known – including by Microsoft – that it is impractical to comply with Microsoft's request while providing modern Web functionality. We have been open about our approach, as have many other Web sites.”

Google referred to Facebook's statement on the issue of P3P in which it says the standard is “out of date and does not reflect technologies that are currently in use on the web, so most Web sites currently do not have P3P policies”.

Google is already under scrutiny for its method of circumventing Safari privacy settings, which unintentionally installed tracking cookies in the browser.

Article courtesy of It Web, by Kathryn McConnachie. www.itweb.co.za