I use safari every day with content blockers and literally never see ads. I use adguard + Safaris own content blockers.

Part of the reason I enjoy Safari is that I've found its content blocking system to be very coherent

That is exactly the bullshit they want you to believe. Restricting your ability to install/modify software on your computer because bad software could harm you. You have been bamboozled.

... This entire discussion IS about bad software that DOES harm you, and you rag on the measures to specifically protect against something like that? What the heck?

Yes, I'm not saying there is no harmful software, I'm saying these kind of "protections" are the wrong solution. The same people who install blindly any add-ons will also install any exe-files if the promising website tells them to because the browsers add-on-system does not provide the required mechanics.

So the next step is to disallow exe-files. But of course you can let the exe-file get signed for a "small" fee...

> The same people who install blindly any add-ons

Like Facebook?

Should installing the Facebook app on your phone allow them to intercept any network requests your web browser makes?

Sure, if the app asks for that permission and you allow it.

Users can manually choose to run unsigned executables. Please stop spreading that FUD.

They can for now. I wrote disallowing unsigned exe-files would be the logical next step in "user-protection".

I think, especially given events that’ve transpired since, Apple was fairly justified in not giving third party developers unfettered access to web pages and network requests running through the browser.

I am very glad that I can install an add blocker on my phone and I don’t have to trust that it’s not going to mine and sell my data.

I haven’t been bamboozled, I’ve just made a different decision with a different set of trade offs than you.

> You have been bamboozled.

The dramatically reduced incidence of various non-technical family members having to go to me or Geek Squad for yet another virus infection says otherwise.

No, it was introduced so that Apple could hurt Google on iOS / mobile Safari without opening the can of worms that is browser extensions.

Keep in mind that Apple gets paid a percentage of Google ad revenue made in Safari; just like how Mozila gets paid a percentage of Google ad revenue made in Firefox.

Apple is hurting themselves too.

Apple came up with a better way to mine your personal data through its Safari browser.

They introduced a feature (Intelligent Tracking Protection - ITP) that they claim blocks ads / trackers from tracking you online on the various sites that you visit.

A simplistic explanation:

Every time you visit a website with an ad or a tracker, it leaves a cookie on your browser that identifies you. You could block many of them by telling your browser to block cookies from third-party domains. This coupled with ad blockers is one effective way to tackle online tracking.

What Apple did was to deliberately take away this control from us and ask us to trust them to deicide which cookie is allowed and which is not.

They REMOVED the feature to allow us to block third-party cookies. So now you have only 2 option in Safari - allow ALL cookies or block all cookies. You cannot block all cookies as it breaks nearly all websites. Apple claims that you should allow websites to set cookies so it can research and find out which cookies track you. And so every time you visit a website, and it sets a cookie, Apple collects this information "anonymously".

So in effect, this "privacy feature" is designed to let Apple know about every website you visit.

Ofcourse, Apple claims all this data is anonymously stored (i.e. not tied to any of your personal information like Apple id). (This idea of anonymous collection of data has already been debunked and proven false as it can be "deanonymised").

Second, Apple claims that its anti-tracking feature will not work in private browsing mode because private browsing mode doesn't save cookies once you close a tab. So in effect, Apple deliberately cripples private browsing mode, in effect, advocating that all its users use normal browsing mode (so that Apple, and others, can mine more data from its users)

Third, by taking away cookie control, Apple now is in full control of deciding which cookie can stay in the browser. This means that if you visit a website regularly, Apple will decide how its cookies should be treated, regardless of whether you want it deleted it or not.

All in all, Apples anti-tracking feature is just designed to give their competitors a harder time while giving Apple the ability to mine their users data better and also taking control away from them.

Google researchers also found that Safari's anti-tracking feature was broken and quite weak:

> ... According to the Google researchers, the vulnerabilities left personal data exposed “because the ITP list implicitly stores information about the websites visited by the user”.

> ... The researchers also identified a flaw that allowed hackers to “create a persistent fingerprint that will follow the user around the web”, while others were able to reveal what individual users were searching for on search engine pages.

Apple claims to have fixed this. But the fact remains that the feature is still not quite effective because most online trackers have moved on to browser finger printing.

The developer of the popular ad-blocker uBlock Origin has also stated that Safari / webkit ad-blocking abilities leave a lot to be desired.

Source:

- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/23/anonymise...

- https://www.fastcompany.com/90278465/sorry-your-data-can-sti...

- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/health/data-privacy-prote...

- https://www.ft.com/content/916a766a-3d27-11ea-a01a-bae547046...

- https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/22/apple_intelligent_t...

- https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158

> So now you have only 2 option in Safari - allow ALL cookies or block all cookies.

Didn't they make blocking of 3rd party cookies the default? If I browse privately and look at the cookies on my machine by going to Prefs > Privacy > Manage Web Site Data, I don't see any cookies showing up after I've closed a page.

The gist of my argument is that you have to cede control to them and trust them, for something that we could explicitly do before.

> is designed to let Apple know about every website you visit.

source?

They obviously don't explicitly say it.

Apple begins mining browsing data in Safari via differential privacy - https://macdailynews.com/2017/09/26/apple-begins-mining-brow...