Apple Lays Roadblock Against Facebook's Web Trackers

Apple took a dig at Facebook today with a new characteristic in the Safari browser that'll prevent the social media giant from tracking your activities beyond the internet.

The upcoming characteristic targets Facebook-powered "Like," "Share" and comment plugins that can appear on third-political party websites. You've probably encountered them as a button or widget on a webpage. Using 1 simply requires you to log into your Facebook account.

The only grab? In its effort to serve targeted ads, Facebook can utilise the plugins to besides learn what sites you've been visiting. For example, someday you load a page with a "Like" button, Facebook will know.

"It turns out these fields can track you, whether you click on them or not," said Apple senior vice president Craig Federighi at the company's annual developer conference on Monday.

"And so this year, we are shutting that downwardly," he added. To do and so, Apple is introducing a new privacy safeguard to Safari that'll activate when the browser encounters a social media-powered plugin. A window will popular upwardly alarm you about the website tracking, and ask whether you'd like it to cease.

Apple Facebook Safari Block

It isn't entirely articulate if Apple intends to scissure downward on all social media plugins, but during Mon'south presentation the company showed the characteristic in activeness against a Facebook comment field.

So far, Facebook hasn't commented on the news. Withal, it isn't the beginning fourth dimension Apple has taken a swipe at the social media behemothic's data collection policies. Before this twelvemonth, the CEOs of both Apple and Facebook traded barbs over their respective business concern models and their impact on consumers' privacy.

During Monday'due south presentation, Apple also took aim at the practice of "fingerprinting" or how marketing firms can rails your online activities by cataloging your calculator's configuration. This can be washed by analyzing the Os, the browser version, along with what font and plugins you've had installed to create a virtual fingerprint of your estimator.

To finish the tracking, Apple is introducing a new feature in the next version of macOS, called Mojave, that'll limit what details marketing firms tin can collect from your online browsing.

"We're presenting spider web trackers with merely a simplified system configuration," Federighi said. "We show them only built-in fonts, and legacy plugins are no longer supported, so they can't contribute to a fingerprint."

"As a result, your Mac will look more like everyone else's Mac and it volition be dramatically difficult for information companies to uniquely identify your device and track you lot," he added.

The new privacy protections volition arrive in the fall for Apple tree users when macOS Mojave and iOS 12 officially launch.

Concluding year, Apple's Safari browser also added an "intelligent tracking prevention" feature that tin stop net browser cookies from harvesting your data. This prompted some online advertisers to mutter.