Apple's WebKit announces strict anti-tracking policy to prevent covert tracking and all cross-site tracking, credits Mozilla's policy for inspiring its approach
WebKit, the open source engine that underpins Internet browsers including Apple's Safari browser, has announced …
Cross-site trackers and covert fingerprinting scripts lose their technical footing across every browser built on WebKit, not just Safari — the enforcement point moves below the browser vendor.
The ad groups that criticized Intelligent Tracking Prevention now face a stricter written standard, one explicitly modeled on Mozilla's policy, narrowing the space between what Firefox and Safari permit.
Second-order effects
Google, which had already committed to phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome, comes under pressure to match an engine-level policy rather than a browser-level toggle — the competitive baseline for privacy shifts upward.
Ad-tech firms must re-architect around first-party contexts, since both major alternative engines to Chrome now formally prohibit cross-site tracking by policy.
Third-order effects
Privacy becomes an engine-level differentiator, with each engine curating not just cookies but the API surface itself — a path Apple extended when it declined to implement 16 new Web APIs over fingerprinting risk.
If Chromium follows the same trajectory, cross-site tracking becomes structurally unviable on the open web, pushing targeting toward walled-garden platforms like Apple's own App Store advertising.
The trend: Browser engines are converging on privacy-by-default as a formal policy layer, with Apple and Mozilla setting standards that force Chrome and the ad industry to follow.
Safari/WebKit announced a new Tracking Prevention Policy. This is great news but another indication of years of impactful privacy research making it into industry use. Bypassing to be treated like bypassing security. Big deal! https://webkit.org/... pic.twitter.com/yXpFaqZ5AP
I've read about half a dozen tech news articles about Safari planning to add Ghostery-like blocking of trackers. All have framed it as targeting ad tech companies like Google yet NOT A SINGLE ONE mentioned how much news sites track you and would thus be impacted as well. https://…
This is big news & should be interesting to see which way Chrome moves -> Apple's WebKit announces strict anti-tracking policy to prevent covert tracking and all cross-site tracking https://techcrunch.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Equating circumvention of anti-tracking with security exploitation is unprecedented. This is exactly what we need to treat privacy as first class citizen. Enough with hand-waving. It's making technology catch up with regulations (not the other way, for once!) #ePrivacy #GDPR http…
My comments in @TechCrunch - overt treatment of privacy as a first class citizen (like security) is the only direction (your move Microsoft, Google, all the rest!). https://techcrunch.com/...
“WebKit will do its best to prevent all covert tracking, and all cross-site tracking (even when it's not covert). These goals apply to all types of tracking listed above, as well as tracking techniques currently unknown to us.” (WebKit is Apple's Safari browser engine) https://tw…
Good folks over at @webkit announced new Tracking Prevention Policy. We support their strict anti-tracking stance and hope to see more developers follow their steps in the future. https://twitter.com/...
Like GDPR, this is a policy that at first sounds like it'll hurt the big ad players like $GOOG and $FB but in reality blocking tracking scripts at the browser level will harm smaller ad tech players & news sites the most. Fallout from this will be big. https://techcrunch.com/...
We've been working to make this clear and understandable, while also being technically comprehensive. A difficult goal. Please followup with any questions! https://twitter.com/...