《华尔街日报》报道说，谷歌和几家著名的在线广告网络一直在使用一种变通方法，绕过苹果Safari和移动Safari浏览器的隐私限制，允许两家公司在用户电脑上存放cookies，即使该设备设置为防止此类行为。争论的焦点是Safari对待饼干的方式。在默认设置下，桌面版和iOS版的应用程序都只接受来自个人特定访问或互动网站的文件，这些文件可用于跟踪浏览习惯。这可以防止来自外部来源的cookie在没有用户直接参与的情况下进入用户的计算机。据报道，当谷歌无法使用cookies来确定用户是否与+1推荐系统一起登录谷歌服务时，谷歌就违反了这一限制。

为了绕过这个问题，谷歌利用了一个开发人员Anant Garg在2010年首次发现的漏洞，该漏洞使用后台发送的空白表单欺骗Safari接受来自未经授权来源的cookie。斯坦福大学的研究员乔纳森·迈尔发现了谷歌使用这种变通方法，后来《华尔街日报》证实了这一点。据报道，当记者联系到这项技术时，谷歌停止了这种做法，并在一份声明中说，“该杂志错误地描述了发生的事情及其原因。我们使用已知的Safari功能来提供登录Google用户已经启用的功能。必须强调的是，这些广告cookie不会收集个人信息。”

《华尔街日报》还发现，这项技术至少被其他三个广告网络以及Facebook使用，Facebook实际上在其开发人员文档的“最佳实践”部分中注意到了Garg的技术。谷歌和Facebook表面上都为用户提供了这一做法的好处，防止了在使用他们的服务时不断地输入密码和登录。然而，这种做法可能很难证明其合理性，特别是最近用户隐私问题比以往更为激烈。至于苹果，一位发言人简单地说，“我们正在努力阻止”有关的做法。

更新：谷歌已经向我们提供了关于此事的完整声明：

The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why. We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It's important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information.

Unlike other major browsers, Apple's Safari browser blocks third-party cookies by default. However, Safari enables many web features for its users that rely on third parties and third-party cookies, such as "Like" butt***. Last year, we began using this functionality to enable features for signed-in Google users on Safari who had opted to see personalized ads and other content--such as the ability to "+1" things that interest them.

To enable these features, we created a temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google's servers, so that we could ascertain whether Safari users were also signed into Google, and had opted for this type of personalization. But we designed this so that the information passing between the user's Safari browser and Google's servers was anonymous--effectively creating a barrier between their personal information and the web content they browse.

However, the Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser. We didn't anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers. It's important to stress that, just as on other browsers, these advertising cookies do not collect personal information.

Users of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome were not affected. Nor were users of any browser (including Safari) who have opted out of our interest-based advertising program using Google's Ads Preferences Manager.