Safari will protect your privacy by blocking third-party cookies

Browsing the internet is fun and all, especially when you’re stuck at home, but Web sites can do a lot of mischievous things. They can place cookies on your hard drive and leave you exposed to aggressive advertisers and attackers, for example. A cookie is a piece of information that a Web site puts on your computer, to remember certain things about you. They can help websites remember useful things like settings and usernames, but on the other hand, allowing cookies from third parties can sometimes result in annoying ads and some of your data leaking out to… well, third parties.

Every browser has the option to block third-party cookies, but it’s often buried under lots of menus and settings. Now Apple has decided to update the settings of the latest version of Safari for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS to have third-party cookies blocking turned on by default, Engadget reports. “The long wait is over and the latest update to Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention is here: Full third-party cookie blocking and more..”, wrote Apple security engineer Josh Wilander on Twitter.
 

The long wait is over and the latest update to Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention is here: Full third-party cookie blocking and more https://t.co/JATLj198HG Safari users, welcome to the future and a safer web!

— John Wilander (@johnwilander) March 24, 2020

 
This move puts Apple a few steps ahead of Google. The latter is also planning to implement this feature in Chrome, but the company will not fully block third-party cookies until 2022. The Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature, which was launched back in 2017, already blocks some of the third-party cookies, Wilander comments. The decision to block all of them by default will give users additional peace of mind and stop advertisers from following them around the web. In practice, If you’re using the latest Safari version you might see fewer ads tracking you around while browsing the internet.