Privacy in Safari: US advertising associations criticize Apple in open letter
Six major U.S. advertising associations have published a joint open letter to Apple in which they sharply criticize a planned privacy feature in the Safari browser.
From version 11 onwards, Safari will use "Intelligent Tracking Prevention" to make it more difficult to track users, especially through third-party cookies. This will "impair the user experience and sabotage the business model for the internet", the advertisers criticize.
Tracking stop
Targeted advertising on the internet likes to use cookies from third-party providers that not only track users on one website, but also across different pages. Apple wants to put a clear stop to this in Safari 11 by only allowing third-party cookies in rare exceptional cases - if users have recently interacted with the cookie provider's own website. In addition, cookies from sites that have not been visited directly for 30 days will be completely deleted. These plans have met with little approval from advertisers.
They are concerned about Apple's solution because it replaces "existing user-defined cookie preferences with Apple's own opaque and arbitrary cookie management standards". The open letter accuses Apple of breaking general standards for handling cookies and thereby sabotaging the business model for the internet. "Apple's one-sided and heavy-handed approach is bad for consumer choice and bad for ad-supported content and services that users love," say the advertising associations. They encourage Apple to reconsider its plans for Safari 11.
Denier front
The American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Advertising Federation, Association of National Advertisers, Data & Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising Bureau and Network Advertising Initiative are six major interest groups behind the open letter to Apple.
Of course, the latter must accept the accusation that they themselves are partly responsible for Apple's one-sided approach. After all, the US advertising industry has so far largely rejected the voluntary "Do Not Track" technology, which is supported by all major browser manufacturers, and has shown no real interest in actually respecting consumers' wishes regarding online tracking. (pte)
