Apple warns advertisers: Break Safari’s privacy rules and we’ll treat you like malware

Apple has released a stern policy guiding its technology for stopping advertisers and websites from tracking you online…

Stephen Shankland for CNET:

Apple on Wednesday published a policy governing how its Safari browser will block advertisers and websites from tracking you online — and it’s got strong words for anyone who tries to thwart its approach.

Safari started blocking all such cross-site tracking two years ago… But websites can use sneaky methods like fingerprinting and supercookies to try to evade those privacy protections, and Apple doesn’t like that one bit.

“We treat circumvention of shipping anti-tracking measures with the same seriousness as exploitation of security vulnerabilities. If a party attempts to circumvent our tracking prevention methods, we may add additional restrictions without prior notice,” Apple’s anti-tracking policy states. In other words, it’s a data leakage hole Apple will try to close, and Safari might punish websites in different ways if they try to bypass Apple’s approach.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s simple: Follow the rules and respect Apple’s WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy – or else.

Advertisers who infringe on a user’s privacy without giving users the ability to identify, understand, consent to, or control them need to be reigned in – and Apple’s just the massive company to do so with real impact!

John Wilander, Apple’s tracking protection project leader, announced the new policy in a tweet Wednesday:

Thanks everyone who attended my talk on web privacy at #usesec19. My demos worked – yay!

By the way, we *just* announced the WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy: https://t.co/jo5MPkNAAs

— John Wilander (@johnwilander) August 14, 2019

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]