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Apple has unveiled a new feature in Safari that changes the way it works with advertising data and user tracking. This will be integrated into WebKit and brings more gentle processing of sensitive data with respect to privacy.

V blog entry developer John Wilander decided to reveal what makes the new method so beneficial for the average user. Simply put, standard ads rely on cookies and so-called tracking pixels. This allows both the advertiser and the website to track where the ad is placed and who clicked, where they went, and whether they bought something.

Wilander claims that the standard methods have basically no restrictions and allow the user to be tracked wherever he leaves the website thanks to cookies. Due protection of user privacy so Apple devised a way to allow advertising to track users, but without additional data. The new way would work directly with the browser core.

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The feature is still experimental in Safari for Mac

Apple intends to focus on many aspects that it considers essential for user privacy. These include, for example:

  • Only links on that page will be able to store and track data.
  • The website where you click on the ad should not be able to find out whether the tracked data has been stored, compared with others or sent for processing.
  • Click records should be time-limited, such as a week.
  • The browser should respect switching to Private mode and not track ad clicks.

The "Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution" feature is now available as an experimental feature in the developer version Safari Technology Preview 82. To turn it on, it is necessary to enable the developer menu and then enable it in the Experimental functions menu.

Apple intends to add this feature to the stable version of Safari later this year. In theory, it can also be part of the browser build that will be in the beta version of macOS 10.15. The feature has also been offered for standardization by the W3C consortium, which handles web standards.

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