If you recall, in February 2019, Apple published a post on the WebKit blog, which introduced version 2.1 of their Intelligent Tracking Prevention browser mechanism. In this version, Safari (and soon all WebKit browsers, including browser apps on iOS and iPadOS) placed an expiration limit on browser cookies set with JavaScript. It was no longer possible to set the expiration date further than 7 days in the future. In a recent 2022 release (I don’t have the exact date or version number), WebKit has now modified this mechanism to no longer set an expiration cap on JavaScript cookies.

Continue reading

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference in late June this year included a couple of big announcements around Apple’s approach to privacy in their software. The new Privacy Report in Safari 14 (on all platforms) uses DuckDuckGo’s tracker radar list to detail which of the most prominent tracking-capable domains have been flagged by Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in the user’s browser. Apple also announced that the WKWebView class, which all iOS and iPadOS (the operating systems for iPhones and iPads, respectively) must use, will include WebKit’s ITP mechanisms on by default.

Continue reading