{"id":230325,"date":"2017-09-23T12:59:41","date_gmt":"2017-09-23T10:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=230325"},"modified":"2017-09-23T13:00:30","modified_gmt":"2017-09-23T11:00:30","slug":"apple-does-right-by-users-in-safari-11-eff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/230325-apple-does-right-by-users-in-safari-11-eff.html","title":{"rendered":"Apple does right by users in Safari 11 – EFF"},"content":{"rendered":"

EFF DeepLinks Blog<\/em><\/p>\n

With the new\u00a0Safari 11 update<\/a>, Apple takes an important step to protect your privacy, specifically how your browsing habits are tracked and shared with parties other than the sites you visit. In response, Apple is\u00a0getting criticized by the advertising industry<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0“destroying the Internet’s economic model.”<\/em>\u00a0While the advertising industry is trying to shift the conversation to what they call the economic model of the Internet, the conversation must instead focus on the indiscriminate tracking of users and the violation of their privacy.<\/p>\n

When you browse the web, you might think that your information only lives in the service you choose to visit. However, many sites load elements that share your data with third parties. First-party cookies are set by the domain you are visiting, allowing sites to recognize you from your previous visits but not to track you across other sites. For example, if you visit first examplemedia.com and then socialmedia.com, your visit would only be known to each site. In contrast, third-party cookies are those set by any other domains than the one you are visiting, and were created to circumvent the original design of cookies. In this case, when you would visit examplemedia.com and loads tracker.socialmedia.com as well, socialmedia.com would be able to track you an all sites that you visit where it\u2019s tracker is loaded.<\/p>\n

<\/b>Websites commonly use third-party tracking to allow analytics services, data brokerages, and advertising companies to set unique cookies. This data is aggregated into individual profiles and fed into a real-time auction process where companies get to bid for the right to serve an ad to a user when they visit a page. This mechanism can be used for general behavioral advertising but also for \u201cretargeting.\u201d In the latter case, \u00a0the vendor of a product viewed on one site buys the chance to target the user later with ads for the same product on other sites around the web. As a user, you should be able to expect you will be treated with respect and that your personal browsing habits will be protected. When websites share your behavior without your knowledge, that trust is broken.<\/b><\/p>\n

Safari has been blocking third-party cookies by default since Safari 5.1,\u00a0released in 2010<\/a>, and has been key to Apple\u2019s emerging identity as a defender of user privacy. Safari distinguished between these seedy cookies from those placed on our machines by first parties – sites we visit intentionally. From 2011 onwards, advertising companies have been devising ways to\u00a0circumvent these protections<\/a>. One of the biggest retargeters, Criteo, even acquired a\u00a0patent<\/a>\u00a0on a technique to subvert this protection. Criteo, however, was not the first company to circumvent Safari’s user protection. In 2012,\u00a0Google paid 22.5 million dollars\u00a0<\/a>to settle an action by the FTC after they used another workaround to track Safari users with cookies from the DoubleClick Ad Network. Safari had an exception to the third-party ban for submission forms where the user entered data deliberately (e.g. to sign up). Google exploited this\u00a0loophole<\/a>\u00a0when Safari users visited sites participating in Google’s advertising network to set a unique cookie.<\/b><\/p>\n

The new Safari update, with\u00a0Intelligent Tracking Protection<\/a>, closes loopholes around third-party cookie-blocking by using machine learning to distinguish the sites a user has a\u00a0relationship<\/a>\u00a0with from those they don\u2019t, and treating the cookies differently based on that. When you visit a site, any cookies that are set can be used in a third-party context for twenty-four hours. During the first twenty-four hours the third-party cookies can be used to track the user, but afterward can only be used to login and not to track. This means that sites that you visit regularly are not significantly affected. The companies this will hit hardest are ad companies unconnected with any major publisher.<\/b><\/p>\n

At EFF we understand the need for sites to build a successful business model, but this should not come at the expense of people’s privacy. This is why we launched initiatives like the\u00a0EFF DNT Policy<\/a>\u00a0and tools like\u00a0Privacy Badger<\/a>. These initiatives and tools target\u00a0tracking, not advertising. Rather than attacking Apple for serving their users, the advertising industry should treat this as an opportunity to change direction and develop advertising models that respect (and not exploit) users.<\/b><\/p>\n

Apple has been a powerful force in user privacy on a mass scale in recent years, as reflected by their support for encryption, the intelligent processing of user data on device rather than in the cloud, and limitations on ad tracking on mobile and desktop. By some estimates, Apple\u00a0handles 30%<\/a>\u00a0of all pages on mobile. Safari’s innovations are not the\u00a0silver bullet that will stop all tracking<\/a>,\u00a0<\/a>but by stepping up to protect their users\u2019 privacy Apple has set a challenge for other browser developers. When the user’s privacy interests conflict with the business models of the advertising technology complex, is it possible to be neutral? We hope that Mozilla, Microsoft and Google will follow Apple,\u00a0Brave<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Opera’s<\/a>\u00a0lead.<\/p>\n

EFF<\/a><\/p>\n

Now read:\u00a0Apple extends movie rentals to 48 hours<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the new\u00a0Safari 11 update, Apple takes an important step to protect your privacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":214054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,16],"tags":[605,35,985],"class_list":["post-230325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-software","tag-apple","tag-headline","tag-safari"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230325"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230333,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230325\/revisions\/230333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}