Wesley Hilliard
Along with iOS 13.4, Safari was updated with improved Intelligent Tracking Prevention to include full third-party cookie blocking and other privacy features.
Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) was introduced in 2017 and has gained several privacy features since. Initial reactions to the release were varying as publishers worried about how this would affect cross-site tracking and related data sources for ad sales.
ITP blocked cookies before, but left enough information for trackers to begin tracking users based on what was being blocked. With the newest update, even this type of tracking and fingerprinting is blocked. Google Chrome is expected to have full third-party cookie blocking by 2022.
According to the WebKit Blog, Websites have long used login fingerprinting to track users based on login states in websites. Full third-party cookie blocking prevents websites from seeing information about the "global browser state" which allows them to see what websites you were signed into previously.
No telling yet how this will again affect ad firms, as even with its limitations previously, it was reported that hundreds of millions in revenue were being lost as a result of ITP. Apple has always taken a strong privacy stance with its devices and services, even to the point of world governments pushing for them to weaken security.
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15 Comments
Thank you Apple!
"No telling yet how this will again affect ad firms, as even with its limitations previously, it was reported that hundreds of millions in revenue were being lost as a result of ITP...." As someone who works for one of the big 5 holding companies, ITP had no measurable impact - work arounds for data stitching and backdoors were identified pretty quickly so no meaningful losses ever surfaced. One work around that worked well was having advertisers drop the cookie from their site so it registered as a 1st party cookie and not a 3rd party. It took Apple a couple of releases to patch that but other methods exist. Maybe smaller performance based firms seen something but collectively it never reached losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. Even blocking 3rd party cookies will have a less than expected impact because tech exists and continues to be developed for advertising to exist in a cookie-less world.
Still doesn't support ad blockers. About 5 years behind Chrome.