Security News > 2020 > March > Apple Safari Blocks Ad-Targeting Cookie Support

Apple has released an update to its Safari browser that blocks third-party cookies, following an announcement by Google that it would do the same for its Chrome browser.

Through the release of Safari 13.1 on Tuesday, alongside some changes to Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention in iOS and iPadOS 13.4, the company now blocks all third-party cookies by default in its browser, according to a blog post by the engineer behind Apple's WebKit, John Wilander.

In the beginning of February, Google released Chrome v80, with support for third-party cookie blocking in a feature called SameSite cookies, which will complete full rollout in about two years.

Wilander said the change for Safari seems brand-new, but it's actually not so drastic - the browser already was blocking most third-party cookies through restrictions in ITP. "To keep supporting cross-site integration, we shipped the Storage Access API two years ago to provide the means for authenticated embeds to get cookie access with mandatory user control," he wrote in the post.

The feature in Safari also disables login fingerprinting, which allows a website to invisibly detect where someone is logged in - and it works in any browser without full third-party cookie blocking, he said.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/apple-safari-blocks-cookies-ad-targeting/154124/