Over the weekend, we brought you the news that Google had been caught bypassing user security settings of Safari on iOS devices, which allowed the Internet giant to track users' behavior while browsing the Web. Google was using cookies in order to track how people browse the Internet.

Today, Microsoft announced via its IEBlog that it has caught Google using the same tactic to track users' behavior on Internet Explorer. "Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies," the company says.

We’ve found that Google bypasses the P3P Privacy Protection feature in IE. The result is similar to the recent reports of Google’s circumvention of privacy protections in Apple’s Safari Web browser, even though the actual bypass mechanism Google uses is different.

Microsoft recommends that users who don't want to be tracked by Google update to Internet Explorer 9 and begin to use the Tracking Protection list feature in the web browser.

UPDATE: Google has issued a statement to The Verge, responding to Microsoft's claim. The Internet giant says that Microsoft is using older technology in Internet Explorer, causing the "issue" with cookies.

Full statement:

Microsoft omitted important information from its blog post today.

Microsoft uses a "self-declaration" protocol (known as "P3P") dating from 2002 under which Microsoft asks websites to represent their privacy practices in machine-readable form. It is well known - including by Microsoft - that it is impractical to comply with Microsoft’s request while providing modern web functionality. We have been open about our approach, as have many other websites.

Today the Microsoft policy is widely non-operational. A 2010 research report indicated that over 11,000 websites were not issuing valid P3P policies as requested by Microsoft...