This rollout brings iCloud file sharing, universal purchase support and more, along with a bunch of features, bug fixes, and improvements. It also introduced an important privacy feature for Safari, its default browser on Apple devices. According to a blogpost by WebKit, Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) will now reportedly fully block third-party cookies in its browser by default. “The long wait is over and the latest update to Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention is here: Full third-party cookie blocking and more safari users, welcome to the future and a safer web!’ tweeted Apple’s Webkit engineer John Wilander who developed the feature. The new privacy feature in Safari’s web browser will now make it difficult for advertisers and spammers to target users using cookies. “Safari continues to pave the way for privacy on the web, this time as the first mainstream browser to fully block third-party cookies by default,” says WebKit. Besides blocking cookies, the feature also completely disables login fingerprinting and a class of cross-site request forgery attacks against website. The update bans advertisers and websites from tracking user’s online behaviour as they visit different sites across the internet. Also, the way websites access your cookie storage has been changed and any script-writeable stored data is auto-deleted after seven days. Until now, only the Tor Browser has featured full third-party cookie blocking by default before Safari, while Brave still has a few (if minor) exceptions in its blocking. The privacy update puts Apple’s browser two years ahead of Google’s Chrome. In January this year, Google said it will be joining Safari and Firefox in blocking third-party cookies within its Chrome web browser and plans to roll out the functionality by 2022.
