Apple Announces the WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy to Protect User Privacy

The Apple WebKit team released the “WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy” this week, detailing the harm of web tracking technology to users and saying that it is deployed in its browser engine to block such activities. The WebKit team announced in a blog post on Wednesday that the WebKit tracking prevention strategy covers the types of tracking that WebKit guard against, alternative tracking strategies, and how the engine handles the unintended consequences of tracking prevention. This document lists many known tracking technologies, including cross-site tracking, status tracking (such as cookies and other storage-based methods), covert state tracking, navigation tracking (such as URL parameter based tracking or link modification, fingerprinting and Covert tracking).

According to the document, WebKit strives to block all forms of covert and cross-site tracking. WebKit imposes restrictions, such as reducing the tracking time window or available data points. When no restrictions can be imposed, WebKit will notify the user and ask them to agree to continue.