According to a BBC report, the group alleges that California-headquartered Google bypassed security settings in the safari browser to install cookies that tracked Internet use – a similar claim to one that saw Google fined $22.5 million in the US.
The Safari users also claim they gained assurances from Google in 2011 and 2012 that this was not the case, and that the browser was secure.

Defining personal

The court action in the UK -- which does not specify how many claimants are involved -- was announced yesterday by London law firm Olswang. So far, one person – 74-year-old Judith Vidal-Hall, the former editor of the magazine Index On Censorship magazine -- has begun legal proceedings against Google.
‘Google claims it does not collect personal data but doesn't say who decides what information is personal', Ms Vidal-Hall said. ‘Whether something is private or not should be up to the Internet surfer, not Google. We are best placed to decide, not them.’
Google declined to comment.
Dan Tench, the Olswang partner acting, told The Guardian newspaper: ‘This is the first time Google has been threatened with a group claim over privacy in the UK. It is particularly concerning how Google circumvented security settings to snoop on its users. One of the things about Google is that it is so ubiquitous in our lives and if that's its approach then it's quite concerning.’

No cease-fire

Meanwhile, The Times newspaper in London reports there is no sign of a cease-fire in on-going technology ‘patent wars’, as applications are being made in record numbers.
The report cites leading companies including Apple, Samsung, Nokia, BT, Google and Research In Motion, and claims that tit-for-tat patent disputes are mainly aimed at slowing the progress of rivals or extracting royalty payments from protected technology.
According to the newspaper, patent application in the tech sector rose 19 per cent last year with 14,205 applications made compared to 11,974 in 2011. In comparison, at the height of the tech boom in 2000 there were just 5,462 appliations.
‘Virtually every major company in the consumer electronics market is now involved in intellectual property litigation with at least one of its competitors,’ Gwilym Roberts of London-based patent attorneys Kilburn & Strode told The Times. ‘Everyone involved is now arming themselves with a war chest of patents. There’s a Wild West-style land grab going on.’