Apple today released a report on the WebKit (Safari development engine) about a new feature that the company has been testing to limit the invasion of ads on the web without permanently eliminating them: Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution (something like “Preservation of Privacy Preserving the Ad”, in free translation).
The name, although complicated, has a very simple function; in short, the tool aims to eliminate the identification factor that online ads usually have. That is, Apple does not intend to end the ads (after all, the web remains mostly free thanks to them), but rather to prevent the companies behind these advertisements from accessing user information.
By removing the possibility of identifying the equation, Apple says that its new technology can help preserve user privacy without reducing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns on the web, because Apple believes that ads do not need to share what you have purchased on a online store with no one else – these companies just need to know that someone clicked on an ad on one site and bought something on another.
Based on this, Apple has released four fundamentals about how the tool works: first, no one should be identifiable based on the click on an ad.
![]()
To this end, Apple intends to inhibit any and all types of resources used by ads to identify the user (even if he has not clicked on the advertisement), including the use of tracking images (pixels that carry cookies and facilitate the creation of a “ profile ”on various sites).
The current practice of assigning a last click on ads has no practical limit for bits of data [coletados], which allows full tracking between user sites that use Cookies. But by keeping the entropy of data attribution low enough, we believe that reporting can be done in a way that preserves privacy.
In addition, only the website where the ad was clicked will be allowed to “measure” the effectiveness of that advertising, eliminating the sending of data to third parties. In this regard – and thirdly – Safari will delay sending information about ad performance (such as when someone signs up to a website or buys something) by up to 48 hours, in order to further hide the activity of user.
Finally, Apple explained that it is possible to limit the amount of data that advertisers can access at the browser level, without the need to install third-party software or plugins.
Apple is expected to officially implement the feature in Safari later this year, but it doesn’t want to do it alone; according to TechCrunch, the Cupertino giant proposed that the technology be adopted by default by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), in the hope that other developers will take advantage of technology to make the web more secure.
As the TC, not always new standards for the web take off. In 2011, the protocol Do Not Track (created by Mozilla) was initially adopted by some of the major browsers, including Safari, but after several controversies the tool that prevented users from being tracked was not, in fact, a success.
In order for PPACA to gain a good adhesion, Apple is also betting on the use of the tool by users who want to browse the web more safely. Until the launch of the feature, Apple will also balance its disclosure with the concerns of advertisers who do not want to be negatively affected by the “newness”.