Apple has quietly revealed that it will implement an anti-tracking policy for its WebKit browser engine that’s based on Mozilla’s.
“We are publishing the WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy, covering what types of tracking WebKit will prevent when other tracking countermeasures come into play such as limiting capabilities and informed user consent, and how WebKit handles unintended impact of our tracking prevention,” Apple’s Jonathan David announced. “We’d like to thank Mozilla for their anti-tracking policy which served as inspiration for ours.”
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
Mozilla began offering what it calls Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox 63 last October. This blocked the most common form of cross-site tracking, meaning cookies and storage access from third-party trackers. This past summer, it expanded this technology into Enhanced Privacy Protection, and it’s now enabled by default for new users and will be auto-enabled for all Firefox users soon.
Basically, Apple picked the right policy to copy, and given its focus on customer privacy, this change makes a lot of sense.
“WebKit will do its best to prevent all covert tracking, and all cross-site tracking (even when it’s not covert),” Apple’s new policy reads. “If a particular tracking technique cannot be completely prevented without undue user harm, WebKit will limit the capability of using the technique … If even limiting the capability of a technique is not possible without undue user harm, WebKit will ask for the user’s informed consent to potential tracking.”
Apple says it will treat any attempt at circumventing its anti-tracking functionality with the same severity as it does the exploitation of security vulnerabilities. And that it will grant no exceptions to its tracking prevention; should sites not behave properly because of the changes—something that happens occasionally with Firefox now as well—that’s the site’s problem, Apple says. “We will typically prioritize user benefits over preserving current website practices,” the policy explains. “We believe that that is the role of a web browser, also known as the user agent.”
This is the right approach to tracking. And a model for Google, Microsoft, and all other web browser makers to follow.
Stooks
<p>Safari was the first browser to prevent cross site tracking, which made a lot of advertisers un-happy. To this day Safari has the BEST audio media playing blocker. I simply do not understand why other browsers do not do this.</p>
dontbeevil
<p>OMG you wrote "apple is COPYING", that explains the iceland ice melting</p><p><br></p><p>of course it's not an Hassan article about a feature copied by apple… it will happen only when the hell will freeze</p>