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A comment on Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari. Parent comment

Re:Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari by miles on Monday June 05, 2017 @04:11PM (#14491293)
They are completely different beasts. Internet Explorer merely offers the option to enable[1] "Do Not Track", which websites and advertisers are free to ignore[2], while Safari's new ad tracker blocker "uses machine learning to identify trackers, segregate the cross-site scripting data, put it away so now your privacy — your browsing history — is your own"[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Internet_Explorer...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Effectiveness

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/apple-adds-a-tracker-block...

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Re:Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari by k-mcgrady on Monday June 05, 2017 @04:23PM (#14491500)
Also worth pointing out that Safari has had the 'do not track' feature for years and Twitter recently announced they are going to start ignoring it (a good example of how useless it is). So this new protection is very necessary and a great USP for Safari.
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Re:Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari by ocdtrekkie on Monday June 05, 2017 @04:45PM (#14491795)
You are actually incorrect. Tracking Protection refers to an IE feature that lets you set "Tracking Protection Lists", which block traffic to specified domains and URLs. You can see a bit about them here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh273400(v=vs.85).a...

The whole "Do Not Track" default thing was, of course, a huge fiasco, as Google and others chose to ignore IE's default usage of it.

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Re:Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari by amt528 on Monday June 05, 2017 @06:22PM (#14492780)
I don't know why this has been downvoted. Tracking Protection Lists are one of the best and unsung features of IE. People don't realize that they're different from Do Not Track.
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Re:Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari by Flimm on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @08:27AM (#14496661)
Do you have to set it up manually? How is this better than downloading one of the privacy-protecting extensions available for most desktop browsers?
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Re:Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari by ocdtrekkie on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @12:12PM (#14498344)
Arguably, the fact that you don't have to trust a random third party extension code is a perk. And since this is a pretty straight up text file format it works off of, it's easy to roll your own or customize it as you wish.

As I said in one of my comments, it's a bit janky to set up because you have to select one of the Tracking Protection Lists from their add-on gallery to turn it on, there's no default list pre-selected.

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