iOS 11, the freshest variant of Apple’s operating system for mobile phones, will hit users’ phones and tablets on Tuesday. It will introduce a new default characteristic for the Safari web browser dubbed “smart tracking prevention”, which blocks certain websites from tracking users around the net, in effect preventing those annoying ads that accompany you everywhere you visit.
The tracking blocking system will also appear on Apple’s computers 25 September, as part of the High Sierra update to macOS. Safari is employed by 14.9% of all internet users, according to data from StatCounter.
Six major promotion consortia have already signed an open letter to Apple expressing their “deep concern” over the way the reform is implemented, and asking the organization to “to rethink its plan to … risk upsetting the valuable digital promotion ecosystem that finances much of today’s digital content and services”.
Tracking of users throughout the internet has become essential to the inner workings of many promoting networks. By using cookies, small text files stored on a computer which was originally created to let situations mark who was logged in, advertisers can create a detailed picture of the browsing history of portions of the public, and use that to more precisely profile and target adverts to the right individuals.
Many of these cookies, known as “third-party” cookies because they aren’t managed by the site that loads them, can be obstructed by browsers already. But merchants also use “first-party” cookies, loaded by a site the user does visit but refreshed as they move around the net. Blocking those opportunities many other aspects of the internet that users expect to work, such as the capability to log into sites using Facebook or Twitter passwords.
To tackle this, the new Safari feature uses a “machine learning model”, Apple says, to know which first-party cookies are really desired by users, and which are set by advertisers. If the latter, the cookie becomes blocked from third-party use after a day, and cleaned completely from the device after a month, drastically restricting the ability of dealers to keep track of where on the web Safari users visit.
Take your time to comment on this article.
