Apple’s Safari browser, which has long positioned itself on the side of user privacy, is limiting another kind of data collection. And in the process, it’s stoking the anger of some in the ad-tech industry, especially due to Apple’s lack of communication about the move, which will affect the architecture of many websites.
Apple is closing a loophole where sites could pass off third-party partners as first-party cookies. Websites use first-party cookies to know who audiences are when they return to their sites. First-party cookies, for instance, mean that people don’t have to log in every time they visit a publisher’s site.
“I think the lack of transparency about this [move] by Apple is part of what everyone is upset about,” said ad-tech vet Jonathan Mendez, who first tweeted about the change earlier this month and told Adweek that developers spotted the change in the new version of Safari 16.4.1, which was released April 7.
“It just shows that they will do whatever they want and don’t care what people think,” he added. “Which, of course, is what people have been upset about with Apple for some time.”
Here’s what to know about Apple’s latest crackdown.
Legitimate cases for sites working with third parties
Websites work with plenty of third parties to enhance their functions, from tools like Google Analytics, which help publishers learn about their audiences, to Adobe Analytics, which improves site performance, to content hosting services. Sites want these partners to have the ability to track their audiences to perform their functions, but third-party cookies are no longer an option to do so since Safari deprecated them in 2017.
As a result, websites have developed a variety of techniques to cloak third-party cookies as first-party cookies, which Safari, over the past several years, has been steadily trying to curtail, spurring a steady game of whack-a-mole.
Even if there are legitimate use cases for the practice, it flies in the face of Safari’s efforts to limit third parties’ access to web users’ information, and there are plenty of shady ad-tech firms that can use these techniques to covertly track users.