Bangalore: Google has to pay $22.5 million fine, the largest ever imposed by U. S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against a single company, for breaching the privacy of Apple’s iPad and iPhone users. It is the second time this year the search giant receives a yellow card from the U. S. government.

Google got accused of circumventing Apple’s protection against “cookies” - small text files stored on the user’s device – from third party advertising sites. These cookies are set for tracking the users without their consent. While the users go to Apple’s Safari browser and ask for Google’s special computer code or “cookies” to be set, third-party cookies from sites like DoubleClick Ad Network also gets set on their device automatically.

Google has set these ad cookies to get the information about the sites the users go into while they browse. And then it uses the information to personalize ads. Prior to Google’s circumvention, Apple could block such cookies.

The report appeared on the Guardian on July 11, said that Google had declined its request to specify how long they have been tracking.

Google  affirmed that the trackings were never harmful to the users and that they have started removing those advertising cookies. They also mentioned their concerns over the users’ privacy and security.

The discovery of this circumvention was by Jonathan Mayer from Stanford University and it got revealed in February this year.