Over the past couple of years, Apple has made positive strides when it comes to internet privacy. It automatically blocks cross-website cookies now, making it harder for ad networks to track you across different sites. But cookies are not the only way networks, or websites, can keep tabs on you: They can do it with the much simpler, old-school method of adding stuff to the end of the URL.
If you copy and paste a URL for an item you’ve been shopping for, you might notice a slew of unreadable stuff at the end—and sometimes it includes a referral account. Depending on the website, or where you clicked from, the URL might have details like your unique click ID, advertising source, which particular campaign you clicked from, and even the medium you used (email, messaging, and so on). In short, it’s a marketer’s dream.
But maybe not for long: Starting in iOS 17, which is currently in public beta, and macOS Sonoma, Apple will automatically remove the unique identifying trackers from the URL when you’re using Private Browsing mode. And, there’s a feature to enable this for the default browsing mode as well.
To do this on your iPhone running iOS 17, go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection and switch to the All Browsing option.
On a Mac that’s running macOS Sonoma, open the Safari app, and go to the Settings menu from the top menu bar. Then go to Advanced > Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection and from the drop-down, choose the In all browsing option.
Once this feature is enabled, a tracking link like the following:
https://example.com/ad_engagement?click_id=YmVhODI1MmZmNGU4&campaign_id=23
Turns into something like this:
https://example.com/ad_engagement?campaign_id=23
The main culprit—which is the unique Click ID parameter—is removed. You can now share the link to others, or you can click links from emails without worrying that an ad campaign is tracking you, and that you’re inevitably going to get one of those “did you like what you saw on our website?” follow-up emails.
[MacRumors]