Do you know when you search for something on a website and, when you visit a totally different one, advertisements appear related to what was previously searched? This can be a little invasive and annoying for some users.
Apple understood this and, to improve the experience of its consumers, brought the feature Smart Tracking Prevention (Intelligent Tracking Prevention) new version of Safari, which will be made available to the general public on iOS 11 (on September 19) and macOS High Sierra 10.13 (on September 25).
Although for some this novelty was a marvel, others did not like the idea so much, especially those who use this type of tracking to sell their services or products. Therefore, six companies focused on advertising came together in an open letter to complain about the changes to this new Safari feature, Adweek.
The companies state in the letter that, with this resource, Apple “sabotages the current economic model of the Internet” and also undermines the user's experience, causing advertising to become “generic, and less timely and useful”.
Apple's one-sided and cumbersome approach is bad for consumer choice and bad for online content supported by ads and services that consumers love. Blocking Cookies in this way to direct a division between brands and their customers, and make advertising more generic, and less timely and useful. Simply put, the choices of Cookies machine-oriented do not represent the user's choice, they represent the choice of the browser manufacturer.
The feature places a strict 24-hour lifetime limit on these tracking tools, which may not affect giants like Facebook or Google, but will likely have a much bigger impact on smaller advertising companies that manage Cookies thousands of sites. This means that the "novelty" can be a downturn for these companies, making the tits of technology remain at the top may be the reason for the great fear.
Certainly, many sites (including the ) use advertisements to make a living. However, as Apple itself said when it filed the appeal at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2017, "it's not about blocking ads, it's about protecting your privacy."
Apple has increasingly increased and improved the privacy and security features on all of its systems, and in fact, this is very important. It is really complicated for many businesses that rely on advertising to boost their sales, but who is the user who wants to be tracked for more than an entire day?
If you are interested in reading the entire open letter (in English), you can access this page.
via AppleInsider
Update by Rafael Fischmann 09/15/2017 s 20:25
In response to criticism, Apple issued a statement on the matter:
Apple believes people have a right to privacy Safari was the first web browser to block Cookies by third parties by default and Smart Tracking Prevention is a more advanced method of protecting users' privacy.
Ad tracking technologies have become so invasive that it is possible for specialized companies to recreate much of a person's web browsing history. This information is collected without permission and used to redirect advertisements, which as advertisements follow people over the internet.
The new Smart Tracking Prevention feature detects and eliminates Cookies or other data used for such tracking through websites, which means that it helps to keep the person's browsing private. The feature does not block ads or interfere with legitimate crawls on websites that people actually click on and visit. Cookies for sites you interact with work as they should, and ads placed by web publications appear normally.
In the end, it's all about choice. Users who do not mind having their privacy invaded at this level can simply disable the feature in Safari or, more radically, use any other browser that does not have this type of protection.
via The Loop
