Apple is officially cracking down on identity resolution in Safari, confirming restrictions that had already started raising concerns across the adtech industry earlier this month.
In a blog post published Monday, Apple announced that Safari and WebKit will block network access to third-party identity resolution infrastructure across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS 27.
The move follows earlier Safari restrictions that affected The Trade Desk and other adtech vendors.
Why This Matters:
Identity resolution has become an important part of digital advertising as the industry has moved away from third-party cookies.
For the uninitiated reading this, when someone enters their email address to log into a website or subscribe to a newsletter, third-party ID providers — think LiveRamp, ID5, and Permutive, to name a few — can collect that information and map it with a persistent identifier. That identifier can then help advertisers recognize and target the same person across different websites and devices.
Apple argues that this constitutes tracking without users’ explicit consent. Its new protections block network requests to ID resolution providers at the domain level, preventing email addresses from being transmitted to those services.
Importantly, Apple says the changes won’t interfere with first-party personalization.
Experts React:
Apple’s WebKit team characterized identity resolution as an attempt to circumvent existing privacy protections.
“It’s not enough to block cross-site cookies to prevent cross-site tracking today because the tracking industry has not stopped trying to track users on the web,” the team wrote in a section titled “Our Commitment to Web Privacy.”
The industry has been reacting to the news on X:
Our Take:
This could have significant implications for identity providers, publishers, and advertisers that rely on email-based identifiers.
One potential response is IAB Tech Lab’s Trusted Server, which moves certain adtech functions from browsers to publisher-controlled servers. It could help publishers reduce their dependence on browser-based infrastructure, although it isn’t necessarily a workaround for Apple’s identity restrictions.
The broader issue remains: Apple continues to dictate what adtech companies can and cannot do within Safari. And the industry keeps having to adapt.
