Hitchcock-style flying camera ad promotes Safari's privacy protections

Apple has regularly promoted Safari as the privacy and security-focused browser. In a new media campaign launched on Tuesday, it's making a big song and dance about it, months ahead of the inbound iPhone 16 and Apple Intelligence.

The campaign is centered around a short film called "Flock." Set to tense music, smartphone users are shown being stalked by security cameras, which morph into bird-like machines that swoop as close to the user as possible.

As the film goes on, more security cameras fly about, trying to spy on the subject's Android smartphone. Scenes include a bat-like swarm of cameras, one flying into a window, and a fisherman throwing away a smartphone to try and fend off inbound cameras.

"Your browsing is being watched," the film declares before showing users opening Safari on iPhone. This causes the bird-cameras to explode, accompanied by the declaration "Safari. A browser that's actually private."

The ad is accompanied by billboards and online ads, telling users the same "being watched" message.

The ultimate aim of the campaign is to remind users that data brokers and marketers can track them across multiple sites. With location data collected without a user's permission and the potential for web extensions to violate a user's privacy, it's hard to stay completely private online.

Cross-site tracking prevention

Apple's technology upgrades to Safari over the years have made it a very protective browser when it comes to user data. Many changes have been made over time to minimize tracking and a user's digital footprint so that they aren't constantly tracked for advertising purposes.

To prevent cross-site tracking, Apple started blocking third-party cookies going back to 2005 and did so for all third-party cookies in 2019. As marketers worked to create new techniques to work around cookie blocks, Apple brought onboard Intelligent Tracking Protection.

Safari also hides the user's IP address from trackers, disabling another method of identifying a user and their exact location.

For fingerprinting, where companies develop a profile of a user's configuration, Safari severely limits the system information that is exposed. By making users seem to be using the same system configuration, it becomes extremely hard to use this technique.

Location data protections

By knowing a user's location, marketers could determine the stores and businesses a user has visited, which could be incorporated into their digital profile.

Safari includes a number of protections to stop just this. To start with, Safari avoids sharing location data with search engines, which is a common way for such data to be collected.

There are instances when a user's location needs to be exposed, such as searches for nearby locations. Safari provides granular control, including prompts to share or deny and how long the sharing will be for.

Web extensions

Browser extensions can be useful, but they can also be a way for developers to acquire data on users. Apple supports the official WebExtensions standard with Safari, enabling extensions to exist.

However, users are advised on the information an extension can access before they enable it in Safari. After installation, users can also restrict the extension's access to specific websites for just a day.

Private Browsing

While Safari was the first to offer a private browsing mode, it has continued to provide more ways to keep browsing in that mode as private as possible.

Aside from not saving web pages visited or searches made to protect against local threats, such as other users, Apple has also done more for online trackers. Even more so than in normal browsing.

For example, advanced fingerprinting protection goes further than the non-private version, clamping down on what data is offered to trackers even more. If users are concerned about the collection habits of some search engines, they can also select different, more privacy-forward options within private browsing itself.

In 2021, Apple also introduced iCloud Private Relay, a system that makes it even harder to track users, by affecting how the user connects to the Internet itself.