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Apple Jams Facebook's Web-Tracking Tools (bbc.com)
The next version of iOS and macOS "will frustrate tools used by Facebook to automatically track web users," reports BBC. At the company's developer conference, Apple's software chief Craig Federighi said, "We're shutting that down," adding that Safari would ask owners' permission before allowing the social network to monitor their activity. BBC reports: At the WWDC conference - held in San Jose, California - Mr Federighi said that Facebook keeps watch over people in ways they might not be aware of. "We've all seen these - these like buttons, and share buttons and these comment fields. "Well it turns out these can be used to track you, whether you click on them or not." He then pointed to an onscreen alert that asked: "Do you want to allow Facebook.com to use cookies and available data while browsing?" "You can decide to keep your information private."
Apple also said that MacOS Mojave would combat a technique called "fingerprinting", in which advertisers try to track users who delete their cookies. The method involves identifying computers by the fonts and plug-ins installed among other configuration details. To counter this, Apple will present web pages with less details about the computer. "As a result your Mac will look more like everyone else's Mac, and it will be dramatically more difficult for data companies to uniquely identify your device," Mr Federighi explained.
Apple also said that MacOS Mojave would combat a technique called "fingerprinting", in which advertisers try to track users who delete their cookies. The method involves identifying computers by the fonts and plug-ins installed among other configuration details. To counter this, Apple will present web pages with less details about the computer. "As a result your Mac will look more like everyone else's Mac, and it will be dramatically more difficult for data companies to uniquely identify your device," Mr Federighi explained.
The real problem these days is fingerprinting. Particularly installed fonts and user agent strings. Those two alone are often pretty unique, and combined with canvas fingerprinting and IP address are very powerful tracking mechanisms.
They are addressing this as well in Mojave. Slimmed down system information, it only reports system fonts. Essentially one MacBook will look like the next, etc. In theory, anyway
It'll still be an arms race. They'll try and find ways around it. GDPR has shown that strong legislation is probably going to be the best way to prevent this sort of tracking.
If you aren't already, you should be using SafeScript which allows you to block lots of fingerprinting stuff. If you think you don't need it then you should check out BrowserLeaks to see how horribly wrong you are. :)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Hey Firefox, looking for something else to copy?
What, you mean like how Firefox provides built-in tracking protection? Or how Firefox provides a Facebook Container which isolates Facebook from the rest of your browsing activity? Or how Firefox is developing an anti-fingerprinting mode? Or how Firefox is integrating Tor as a built-in feature?
I don't think you know what you're talking about. The web browser is the most commonly used piece of application software. If there's one type of software you should educate yourself about, it's web browsers.