Should Microsoft rumours prove true, then their recent claims of Google secretly overriding users' privacy settings in the Internet Explorer browser could cause shockwaves across the Internet.

Monday saw Microsoft's corporate Vice President for Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, make such accusations via a blog post. A few days later, Wall Street Journal conducted an investigation which also revealed that Google was bypassing the privacy settings of those using Apple's Safari browser on desktop computers as well as on iPhones.

Dean Hachamovitch explained: "When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?  We've discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies," reported Fox News.

According to Hachamovitch, the Mountain View organisation uses special computer code for tricking Apple's Safari Web browser software to let Google monitor users.

Google's spokesman stated that the company had been mischaracterised on what happened as well as why. The company claimed that they use Safari functionality for providing features that signed-in Google users had enabled.