How Apple Safari browser is safeguarding users’ personal data from misuse

NEW DELHI: As millions of people remain concerned about the safety of their data when they browse the web, Apple has revealed how data tracking is still all-pervasive and browsers can expose users to it without their permission — tracking their behaviour for advertising purposes.

The threats are multiple -- data companies can track you across multiple websites, your location data can be collected without your permission, web extensions can violate your privacy and even if you go into private mode, your protections are limited.

In contrast, according to Apple which has released a new film on browser safety, Safari prevents cross-site tracking; helps you protect your location data; has privacy-preserving web extensions; and a state-of-the-art Private Browsing mode with real protections.

Some websites include 100 or more trackers from different companies on a single page.

Data companies are also constantly evolving new techniques to track people, so Apple has gone beyond just blocking cookies by creating ‘Intelligent Tracking Prevention’.

The company uses machine learning to learn which domains are used to track you, and then it immediately isolates and purges the tracking data from your device.

“If you want to see what Intelligent Tracking Prevention is protecting you from, you can look at the Safari Privacy Report,” according to the tech giant.

Safari also hides IP address from known trackers.

“This is important, because your IP address can be used to identify you across websites and sessions, and it can reveal your precise location,” according to Apple.

However, new techniques known as fingerprinting even go so far as to track your system configuration, your fonts and your plug-ins that have been installed.

Even your screen resolution can be used as part of a fingerprint.

This allows them to combine these characteristics of your device to create a “fingerprint” to track you online.

To combat fingerprinting, Safari presents a simplified version of the system configuration to trackers so more devices look identical, making it harder to single one out, Apple informed.

Safari also supports the official WebExtensions standard, so it’s easy for developers to offer extensions from other browsers.

“With Safari, users are informed about the information the extension can access before they enable it. And they can restrict the access an extension has to just a day or to just specific websites,” said the company.

Safari was the first browser to introduce a Private Browsing mode, back in 2005.

The additional privacy protections of Private Browsing in Safari 17.0, Safari 17.2 and Safari 17.5 set a new bar for user protection.