WebKit Blocking Identity Resolution Infrastructure
Apple’s latest privacy crackdown left the online ad industry scrambling for answers. Now, the tech giant has finally offered some.
A “post-cookie” tracking method emerged, called identity resolution. In this scheme, third parties (i.e., not the website owner) invisibly collect your email address when you log in or sign up for a newsletter. They send the email address to their servers, create an opaque tracking ID permanently linked to your email address, and send that tracking ID back to the webpage. The tracking ID is stored on the website and can from thereon be used for arbitrary purposes linked to your email address, such as building a profile of your browsing or targeting ads at you across websites. Logging out or unsubscribing from that newsletter does not remove the tracking ID or your email address stored with the third party. Some companies serve as third-party infrastructure to facilitate identity resolution. They are present but invisible on many webpages where you enter your email address or use your email address for login purposes. They are not themselves login providers or newsletter services, they’re just there to track you. In our iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS 27 releases, Safari and WebKit block network access to identity resolution infrastructure to prevent cross-site tracking. This stops them from sending your email address to their servers and all the downstream effects of that. The blocking is done on the domain level, meaning they can’t just change the structure of the network request to work around the protection.
- There is an unreleased update to WebKit that makes this list dynamic, meaning Apple can remotely add new vendor domains to the blocklist at any time without requiring users to download a new OS version.
- The list is not public facing, domains added to the blocklist don’t appear to be notified of their addition and there does not appear to be any formal appeal process.
Previously:
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