Google has agreed to pay 17 million dollars to 37 states and the District of Columbia for violating consumer privacy by placing unauthorized cookies on computers using certain Apple Safari web browsers in 2011 and 2012.
The New York Attorney General's office claimed that Google Inc. altered coding from its Doubleclick advertising platform to circumvent default privacy settings on Safari without consumers' knowledge, News.com.au reports.
According to the report, Google had disabled the coding in February 2012 after the practice was widely reported.
The company officials said that the cookies collected no personal information and agreed to improve the information that it provides about cookies.
