The Wall Street Journal has revealed that Google was defying the privacy settings in Apple Inc.'s Safari browser in order to monitor users' online activities without even seeking for their consent.

The report caused privacy advocates like the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) to lambast the search giant for its actions.

Google subsequently announced that it had taken down the feature guilty of breaching Safari users' privacy but this hasn't prevented a Safari user based in Illinois from suing Google over the issue in a federal court in Delaware.

"Google's willful and knowing actions violated" federal wiretapping laws and other computer-related statutes," read the suit filed by Matthew Soble - the complainant, as reported by the Washington Post.

Soble wants his lawsuit to be given the status of class-action which would allow him to drag Google in court on behalf all those "whose default privacy settings on the web browser software produced by Apple, known as Safari, were knowingly circumvented by Google".

source:http://www.itproportal.com/2012/02/20/google-sued-over-safari-privacy-snafu/