Apple announced a slew of new software features at its Worldwide Developers ConferenceonMonday. In addition to upgraded animojis and the upcoming iOS 12, the company announced a more radical innovation.
The next version of Apple’s Safari browser will tackle ad tracking and device-snapping techniques that advertisers and data brokers use to track web users as they browse. Apple appears to have started with Facebook.
The next version of Safari will explicitly notify you when a website is trying to access cookies or other data stored on your computer and let you decide whether to allow it. It’s a welcome feature that offers clear choices about online tracking.
The upcoming Safari will counter so-called fingerprinting, which is a tracking method that advertisers use to collect information from users’ devices — like how they’re set up, what fonts they have installed, and what add-ons they’re running. All of this extra information adds up to a unique, identifiable identity.
In the upcoming macOS Mojave and iOS 12 operating systems, Safari will scrub much of this data, exposing only general configuration information and default fonts.
“Data companies are smart and relentless,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said Monday, explaining why Apple decided to add these features. The company calls the suite of tools “Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.0.”
The new version of Safari will also help improve passwords by offering tools for generating strong passwords, autofilling them, and saving them.
The browser will also check for password reuse, in order to discourage users from using the same password across multiple services.
The new features come in addition to those in last year's Safari update that blocked autoplay of videos and audio. However, this year's updates try to fend off tracking techniques.
Apple is not the only company to have such tools in its browser for privacy and security.
As with Chrome's Do Not Track mechanism, Apple appears to have taken some of Safari's new protections from the Mozilla Foundation, which provides protection features in its Firefox browser.
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