Apple is serious with its new policy guiding its technology for preventing advertisers and websites from tracking users online. The Cupertino-based tech giant promises to provide hostile action for sites that will try to break the new privacy rules of Safari. At some point, Apple says that it will find specific sites and advertisers using its latest anti-tracking features.
Companies and website publishers that pop up ads on them can monitor visitors from one site to another, creating a profile about the visitor's interests which aims to show more ads designed to the visitor's behavior based on his or her interests online. But, this can massively impair the person's privacy and these are the things that browsers are beginning to crackdown these days. Apple is very serious on its stance against these practices especially those that try to track and share the browsing history of the users.
In the company's new policy page released last Wednesday, Apple says that apps and websites that try to bypass the anti cross-site tracking features of Safari will be treated as malware. Apple's browser, Safari began blocking these cross-site trackers a couple of years ago. Brave has also done the same since it was released over three years ago.
Microsoft is also developing similar technology with Edge while Firefox already did it last June. In Chrome, Google has also started some kind of a crackdown. However, despite these efforts from tech titans, websites can still utilize sneaky processes like supercookies and fingerprinting to attempt to evade privacy parameters and Apple does not appreciate it. According to the Cupertino-based tech giant, it will utilize new anti-tracking features that identify the practices of particular bad actors.
The company also notes that it will implement these latest features without prior notice. Cross-site tracking or monitoring is a practice of tracking the person's behavior based on his browser's history. Most of the time, it includes data sharing to third parties like the advertisers. If you have ever checked a product at Amazon and then found ads for it every time you open any website, then you have been a victim of cross-site monitoring or tracking.
According to CNET, Apple is the first tech company to announce cross-site tracking crackdown. Apple notes that its latest policy was inspired by the anti-tracking policy of Mozilla. But, the scale of the company and its standing with the consumers and within the industry could potentially shift the tide against such practice.
