On August 9, the FTC announced that it obtained from Google a $22.5 million civil penalty to resolve allegations that the company misrepresented certain privacy protections to consumers. According to the FTC, Google violated a previous FTC settlement and order when it placed advertising tracking cookies on the computers of Apple’s Safari Internet browser users, despite Google specifically telling users that they would be opted out of such tracking by default. The FTC states that the penalty is the largest it has ever obtained for violation of a previous order.
