Apple's Safari Browser now blocks all third-party cookies by default. Apple has introduced an important update to Safari in macOS 10.15.4 and iOS 13.4, in which the latest update will now allow Safari to fully block third-party cookies by default.
Safari now Blocks all Third Party Cookies by Default
Apple has introduced an important update to Safari in macOS 10.15.4 and iOS 13.4, in which the latest update will now allow Safari to fully block third-party cookies by default.
This latest Safari updates included an important towards web privacy.
The latest version of Apple's Safari Web Browser for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS now blocks all third-party cookies by default. The feature will be enabled by default.
Safari's latest feature is set to make it tougher for advertisers and spammers to target using the cookies.
However, HTTP Cookies are very useful for the internet because it helps websites to know who we are if we’ve already logged in, and so on.
Unfortunately, over the years, cookies have gained bad fame for being used for tracking users across websites, meaning that over time, websites and companies will learn more about you and your activities, and can thus create extremely targeted ads.
According to Apple,
“It might seem like a bigger change than it is. But we’ve added so many restrictions to ITP since its initial release in 2017 that we are now at a place where most third-party cookies are already blocked in Safari.” Apple had actually introduced cookie blocking in Safari back in 2017, but it seems that these changes will make the browser’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention even better.
Also reported by the Engadget,
This feature should prevent sites from using login fingerprinting or even the state of your anti-tracking prevention to watch your behavior. It should also thwart cross-site request forgery attacks, and prevents the use of auxiliary third-party domains to identify users.
Apart from blocking cookies, Safari will now keep scripts of a website for seven days and includes counters to sites that try to avoid tracking detection by delaying their redirects.Moreover, Safari is now one of the first mainstream browsers to block third-party cookies. Earlier, relatively less popular browser Tor Browser offers similar privacy features, while Brave's browser still has a few (if minor) exceptions.
Further, Apple won't be alone in the future to block all third-party cookies but also Google aims to achieve the same for Chrome Web browser by 2022, as an example.
The Official WebKit team also plans to report the results of this change to the World Wide Web Consortium to give other browser developers some assistance. And yes, you can frequently enable this kind of tracking after the fact. It's still a milestone, though, and could easily force ad creators and site operators to rethink attempts to collect tracking data.
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