{"id":8258,"date":"2019-08-21T11:19:22","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T15:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8258"},"modified":"2019-08-21T11:19:22","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T15:19:22","slug":"apple-gets-serious-about-web-tracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8258","title":{"rendered":"Apple Gets Serious About Web Tracking"},"content":{"rendered":"

In some very welcome news, Apple has announced that it will be implementing and enforcing a new anti-tracking policy in Safari. The new WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy<\/a> lays out what types of tracking they will attempt to prevent and states explicitly that any attempts to bypass their anti-tracking protections will be treated just like any other exploitation of a security vulnerability. They also state that there will be no exceptions no matter how worthy the organization seeking one or how benign their intentions.<\/p>\n

The types of tracking that they are seeking to prevent are all cross-site tracking and all covert tracking. Covert tracking is basically tracking that\u2019s hidden from the user. It includes such things as fingerprinting and convert stateful tracking that surreptitiously stores tracking information on the user\u2019s computer using facilities not intended for that purpose.<\/p>\n

In their article about the announcement, The Next Web speculates that the move will force other browsers, such as Chrome, to take similar actions<\/a>. I\u2019m a little skeptical about that since the point of Chrome is to make it easier for Google to track user behavior, a point amply demonstrated by their recent decision to log you into Google under the covers when you\u2019re logged into any Google account<\/a>. Of course, some browsers, like Mozilla, have already taken similar steps and the WebKit announcement specifically gives them a shout out for being the inspiration for their own steps.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m under no illusion that Apple\u2019s and Mozilla\u2019s actions will end the scourge of adtech but I do welcome anything that makes it harder for them to spy on us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In some very welcome news, Apple has announced that it will be implementing and enforcing a new anti-tracking policy in Safari. The new WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy lays out what types of tracking they will attempt to prevent and states … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-8258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8259,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258\/revisions\/8259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}