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

6 Comments

  1. Unfortunately, some “good tracking” gets caught up by Safari’s anti-tracking tech. For example, if you get a guest pass to the WSJ, it will not persist beyond a single session on iOS. On other (desktop) browsers, it lasts the full week, as long as you don’t wipe cookies.

  2. Apple is going to loose their popularity if they stop advertisers to marketing their business through online.They should create some awareness program how to prevent advertise in Apple.They can make some content concerning details with how to cheat turnitin so that general Apple users and advertisers will get benefit.

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