Today at Apple’s WWDC, a bit of confusion has emerged around changes to Safari’s tracking and fingerprinting protections.
Eric Seufert, an adtech analyst, says that Apple’s new Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection (ATFP) — first introduced for Safari’s Private Browsing mode in 2023 — will now be enabled by default in all browsing modes. According to Seufert, this would mean that Safari would automatically strip tracking parameters from links everywhere, not just in Private Browsing. Here’s his full post on X, along with the ensuing back-and-forth:
However, Sean Bedford, an engineer at Meta who spoke directly with Apple engineers at the event, says it’s more nuanced. Bedford says the update, as detailed on the WebKit blog, doesn’t fully expand Private Browsing features to all browsing modes. Instead, it targets known fingerprinting scripts, restricting their ability to use web APIs to gather device data — a partial but significant expansion of protections.
Why This Matters:
Apple’s ATFP works to limit how websites and advertisers track users across the web. Originally introduced in Safari’s Private Browsing mode, ATFP automatically removes tracking parameters from links and prevents scripts from collecting device-level data that can be used to identify and follow users.
If Seufert’s interpretation is correct, it would represent a sweeping privacy shift for all Safari users, fundamentally changing how advertisers and analytics providers can track user behavior across the web. Bedford’s clarification suggests the update is more of a targeted clampdown, focusing on well-known tracking techniques rather than broadly blocking tracking in every scenario.
Experts React:
Good/apt quote here by Noah King:
Our Take:
Regardless of which interpretation is fully accurate, today’s confusion signals Apple’s continued push to tighten privacy controls — and highlights the importance of clear communication from major tech platforms about how these updates work in practice. (Especially given Apple’s work around ad privacy often feels either performative or biased in support of its own ad business.)
Let’s be honest, it often feels like these larger companies make unilateral decisions about how the entire web works — and through that, how ads work. Expect advertisers and adtech companies to be scrambling to read the fine print today and tomorrow, just in case.
