In an investigative report today, the Wall Street Journal says Google circumvented the iPhone’s privacy settings to track user browsing habits against their wishes.

The company “used special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users,” the WSJ reports, noting that Safari, “is designed to block such tracking by default.”

Google says the newspaper is mischaracterizing the situation, telling the WSJ in a statement, “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.”

Whatever the case, Microsoft says it’s more evidence that you should use Internet Explorer.

Yes, it’s a bit of a stretch, given that Internet Explorer isn’t available to iPhone users. It’s hard to imagine many people switching to Windows Phone over this latest report.

That said, the WSJ investigation does more fuel to the fire as Microsoft tries to persuade Google users concerned about privacy to try out its competing services. The effort started earlier this month with Microsoft taking out a series of full-page newspaper ads.

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