Paidsettlement · FTC Act (consent order)
Google's $22.5M FTC fine over Safari cookie tracking
$22.5M
US Federal Trade Commission
US · 2012
Status: Paid
What happened
The FTC penalised Google for circumventing Safari's default cookie-blocking to track users for advertising, despite telling those users they were protected. It was a record FTC civil penalty at the time.
How it affected users
Millions of Safari users were tracked after being told they would not be.
Status timeline
Aug 9, 2012
Penalty announced.
Sources
- FTC press releaseregulator
Last verified 2026-07-02. Spotted an error? Report a correction.
Cite this entry
Deepak Gupta, "Google's $22.5M FTC fine over Safari cookie tracking," Tech Fines Directory, guptadeepak.com, 2012-08-09. https://guptadeepak.com/tech-fines/violation/google-us-safari-2012/