Google Bypasses IE Privacy Says Microsoft
Hot off the news that Safari's privacy measures for users had been bypassed by Google last week, Microsoft is joining in by noting that their Internet Explorer web browser's privacy controls had been modified in a similar manner. Protection tips have been offered up by Microsoft and they've taken this opportunity to push Google into the mud once more as they continue to defend themselves against privacy naysayers. Microsoft has reportedly contacted Google to ask it to "commit to honoring P3P privacy settings for users of all browsers."
What you're about to see is a bit of information from Microsoft on what they've found in what Google is doing to bypass their own security measures. You'll find the term P2P which stands for Platform for Privacy Preferences, an official recommendation that the World Wide Web Consortium uses to summarize their own privacy policies. Microsoft is noting that they will be investigating what changes they'll need to make to their products as the P3P specification says that all browsers should ignore unknown tokens. Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer, wrote the following:
"Technically, Google utilizes a nuance in the P3P specification that has the effect of bypassing user preferences about cookies. The P3P specification (in an attempt to leave room for future advances in privacy policies) states that browsers should ignore any undefined policies they encounter. Google sends a P3P policy that fails to inform the browser about Google's use of cookies and user information. Google's P3P policy is actually a statement that it is not a P3P policy." – Hachamovitch
After finding this information to be true, Microsoft noted that they'd be doing everything they could to protect you, the user, and your privacy of course. They go so far as to let you know how to "block all cookies from a given site (e.g. *.google.com)" in their big blog post on the subject. What do you think, folks, need the privacy that the P3P describes, or is Google's hotly contested policy enough?