Apple Safari Browser Starts Blocking Third-Party Cookies By Default

Apple Safari browser ‘s latest update blocks third-party cookies by default. The update is a big privacy leap, especially to Safari’s reputation in the browser market.

The update is specifically on Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature which now makes it hard for advertisers and websites to track your browsing habits.

With ITP updated to include third-party cookie blocking, Safari now prevents login fingerprinting, cross-site request forgery attacks against websites through third-party requests, plus removes the ability to use auxiliary third-party domain to identify users.

For third-party developers who need cookie access, however, it can be achieved using the Storage Access API. In that line, it should make things easier, according to John Wilander, Apple’s WebKit engineer.

Some competitors like Google’s Chrome have such plans underway as well, but that will be implemented later in 2022, according to Google. Mozilla’s Firefox, on the other hand, already rolled out a similar feature back in September last year.

Brave, recently ranked as one of the most privacy-focused browsers has not yet implemented the limitations fully. Tor, however, was the first browser to have such functionality in place.

Safari browser has also been updated to limit the storage of a website’s scripts is to one week, deleting them automatically without user interaction. To avoid the system being downplayed by some websites, several measures have been put in place to counter sites that try to avoid cookie deletion by delaying redirects.

The new updated Safari Browser is available across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

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