Good news for developers: Apple announced that it will completely block third-party cookies by default

News on March 25, 2020: Apple announced that Apple’s Safari browser has begun to completely block third-party cookies by default.

According to The Verge, Apple on Tuesday released a major update to its Safari browser Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), including new updates for iOS, macOS, watchOS and more, This feature allows Safari to block cookies and prevent third parties from snooping on users' online habits.

Apple said that Safari has blocked most third-party cookies since 2017, and now it has become the first major browser to completely block third-party cookies by default.

Prior to this, only the Tor browser blocked all third-party cookies by default, and Google Chrome, which has the highest market share, announced that it would implement a similar policy in 2022. Apple said that additional benefits of completely blocking third-party cookies include preventing cross-site request forgery attacks and simplifying development.

Apple also announced that all script-writable storage such as LocalStorage will have a 7-day data expiration date, and the data stored after 7 days will be automatically deleted. Affected storage formats include Indexed DB, LocalStorage, and Media keys, SessionStorage and Service Worker registrations.

Safari can now block all third-party cookies, according to Apple WebKit engineer John Wilander. This means that, by default, no advertiser or website can follow users across the Internet using common tracking technologies.

It's a major milestone for online privacy, as Apple's Safari browser held a full two-year lead over Chrome before Google said in January it would begin phasing out third-party cookies. Apple has gradually restricted third-party cookies since 2017.

Wilander said, “Safari continues to pave the way for privacy on the web by being the first major browser to completely block third-party cookies by default. We know Chrome wants to adopt this behavior as well, they announced This feature will be rolled out in 2022. We will report our experience completely blocking third-party cookies to the W3C's Privacy Group to help other browsers make the leap."

Restricting and blocking third-party cookies will be a big deal Trend, if IE can block third-party cookies, it will be a big milestone. I hope to follow up as soon as possible!