Apple rolled out an important update for the latest version of Safari. Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) update for iOS, iPadOS and macOS now blocks full third-party cookies. Safari is the first mainstream browser to hinder cookies by default, John Wilander, an engineer behind Apple’s WebKit, wrote in a blog post.

Tor Browser has included complete third-party cookies blocking by default since Safari, but Brave just has a couple of gaps left in preventing it and they’re in the same strong spot in reality. We know Chrome needs this action, too, so they’ve confirmed that they’re going to release it by 2022.

Safari’s new update is designed to make it easier for marketers and spammers to exploit cookies. Cookies make it possible to control behaviours through websites, one aspect that has been under growing scrutiny lately, as the web community has begun to take stock of how much information has been gathered on-line by such trackers, commonly known as third-party cookies, and often used by social networks and corporate promoters. For this new update, the most recent Safari does not allow these cookies to function.

The feature should have limited the expiry of the client-side cookies to seven days. The provision prohibited the use of third-party cookies by third-party scripts for cross-site tracking purposes.

The ITP has matched the remaining script-writable storage types with the current client-side cookie limitation, removing all of the website script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user contact on the site.