Apple Safari blocks all third-party cookies by default after update

Apple has released an update to Safari that makes it easy for users to block all third-party cookies. This update is available for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

John Wilander, the WebKit developer behind the new feature, writes that the blocking of all third-party cookies is due to a new update to Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention. He states that users may not experience this update as a big change, because quite a few restrictions have already been added since the introduction of Intelligent Tracking Prevention in 2017.

According to him, the update is a “significant improvement for the privacy of the users, as there are now no more exceptions. Cookie blocking for cross-site resources is now enabled by default in Safari.

Wilander says that only the Tor browser was the first to block third-party cookies, describing that the Brave browser is now also about the same level, although he says there are still a few exceptions with this browser. Google has already indicated that it wants to remove third-party cookies from Chrome, but that will not happen until 2022. Chrome users can already do this manually, via a toggle in the settings.