In advertisements that have aired during the Olympics and are popping up online, Apple says its Safari is “a browser that’s actually private.”
That’s mostly true, with caveats.
Apple deserves credit for making many privacy protections automatic with Safari, which you probably use to browse the web if you have an iPhone, Mac computer or iPad.
But Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said Safari is no better than the fourth-best web browser for your privacy.
“If browser privacy were a sport at the Olympics, Apple isn’t getting on the medal stand,” Cahn said. (Apple did not comment about this.)
The bottom line if you use Safari: You should feel reasonably good about the privacy (and security) protections, but you can probably do better — either by tweaking your Apple settings or using a web browser that’s even more private than Safari. I’ll dig into the details.
🟢 Safari automatically stops tracking “cookies.”
These tiny software files are used by many websites and are standard for the most popular web browser, Google’s Chrome, to keep tabs on where you roam online.
Cookie tracking across the web is likely why you see online shoe ads after you looked up running shoes once.
Cookies can be helpful or innocuous individually. In mass volume, though, cookies help companies assemble digital dossiers about your income, location, interest in mental health conditions, love of horror movies and other things you might not want insurance companies or supermarkets to dig up.
Safari stops third-party cookies anywhere you go on the web. So do Mozilla’s Firefox and the Brave browser. You can use either of those on a Windows PC, Mac, iPhone or Android device. Safari is only available for Mac, iPhones and iPads.
Chrome allows third-party cookies in most cases unless you turn them off. Read how for Chrome and the Microsoft Edge browser. (You may not be able to do this if you’re using a Google or Microsoft account managed by your employer.)
🟡 Safari enables other kinds of tracking.
Even without cookies, a website can pull information like the resolution of your computer screen, the fonts you have installed, add-on software you use and other technical details that in aggregate can help identify your device and what you’re doing on it.
The measures, typically called “fingerprinting,” are privacy-eroding tracking by another name. Nick Doty with the Center for Democracy & Technology said there’s generally not much you can do about fingerprinting. Usually you don’t know you’re being tracked that way.
Apple says it defends against common fingerprinting techniques but Cahn said Firefox, Brave and the Tor Browser all are better at protecting you from digital surveillance. That’s why he said Safari is no better than the fourth-best browser for privacy.
It’s fantastic that big companies like Apple and Meta and smaller organizations are competing to win you over with privacy features.
Adding privacy protections also has trade-offs, including disabling parts of websites you need. Smaller browsers might have the freedom to be more aggressive on privacy than Apple, which risks annoying website owners, advertisers, regulators and some users when it tightens privacy protections.
Using the handy “Cover Your Tracks” privacy test from the consumer privacy nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, my iPhone using the Safari browser showed I had partial protection from common types of data tracking.
I got a similar result using the Firefox browser on an Android phone. A PC using the Chrome browser failed the EFF tracking protection test.
🟡 Safari’s “private” mode is not private from everyone.
This is a moment to remind you of the limits of “private” or “incognito” modes in web browsers.
When you’re using this mode in Safari, your device’s web browser won’t save a record of what websites you looked at or what web searches you did.
That could be useful if you’re using a shared computer at a public library or if you’re using your household’s computer to shop for a surprise gift or use adult sites.
But as with most other browsers, the websites you’re using and your home internet provider or workplace may still know the sites you visited. If you use a virtual private network — software that shields your location — the VPN owner likely logged where you go even in private mode.
Mozilla has a helpful myth-busting document about Firefox’s private browsing mode that may apply to other browsers, too.
🟢 Safari’s “private” mode has extra privacy protections.
When you use this option, Apple says it does more to block use of “advanced" fingerprinting techniques. It also steps up defenses against tracking that adds bits of identifying information to the web links you click. Whatever you’re doing on the web locks so no one but you can see it.
You can turn on private mode for everything you do in Safari, but there may be downsides. Apple says if you use private browsing all the time, some parts of websites might not work correctly.
If you choose this option: On an iPhone, go to the Settings app → Safari → Advanced → Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection → change to “All Browsing.”