Safari Has Become the Best Browser to Block Third-Party Tracking
Yesterday’s release of Safari 13.1 introduces stricter third-party cookie blocking features that prevent websites from identifying Safari users and tracking their online activity. This means that Apple’s default web browser is now the best choice for stopping third-party trackers, and the first browser to overtake Chrome completely blocks third-party cookies.
You can read about the changes in the latest WebKit Developers Blog , but this post is written for web developers and contains a little more technical information than you might need. Here are the important points: Safari ITP (Intelligent Tracking Prevention) now blocks all third-party cookies by default. The ITP allowed a few exceptions when it was introduced back in 2017, but websites could use those exceptions to identify users based on what was blocked and track their activity. These exceptions also allowed users to be fingerprinted based on which other websites they were currently logged into a different location, even if they had Safari’s strictest privacy settings turned on.
ITP will now prevent any third party tracking and disable these workarounds. While some information is still stored, the way websites access your cookie store has changed, and any saved data written by the script is automatically deleted after seven days.
These are important changes and great news for Safari users, and hopefully more companies will follow Apple’s lead. Google says similar changes will be made to Chrome by 2022, but other browsers such as Brave and Tor still allow certain cookie exceptions, despite otherwise having a stellar reputation for user anonymity .
In all fairness, most browsers can be bundled with extensions , advanced settings, and other software like VPNs to make them more secure, but when it comes to standard tracking settings, Safari seems to be the best browser. (now).