EXPOSED: Is Safari secretly tracking your every move? Here’s how to uncover the shocking truth!
If you’re an avid user of Apple’s Safari browser, you might be surprised to learn that your every move could be secretly tracked. While Safari is known for its fast and smooth browsing experience, it may not be as safe and secure as you thought.
So, how can you find out if Safari is tracking your every move? And, what can you do to protect yourself? Keep reading to uncover the truth and learn how to stay safe while browsing the web.
How Safari tracks your every move
Like many other web browsers, Safari uses cookies to help websites remember your login information, preferences, and browsing history. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer or mobile device to retrieve information about your online activities.
While cookies can be helpful, they can also be used to track your movements across various websites. For example, if you visit a shopping website and look at a product, you may start seeing ads for that product on other websites you visit. This is due to the use of tracking cookies.
In addition to cookies, Safari also uses fingerprinting to track your every move. Fingerprinting is a technique that uses various device characteristics, such as screen size and browser settings, to create a unique identifier for your device. This identifier can be used to track your movements across the web, even if you delete your cookies.
How to uncover if Safari is tracking your every move
So, how can you find out if Safari is tracking your every move? One way is to check your browser settings.
To access your Safari Privacy settings, follow these steps:
- Launch Safari and click on “Safari” in the top-left corner of the screen.
- Click on “Preferences” from the dropdown menu.
- Click on the “Privacy” tab.
Here, you can see and manage your browser’s privacy settings. You can decide whether Safari should accept cookies, block all cookies, or only block third-party cookies. You can also manage website tracking preferences, clear website data, and more.
Another way to uncover if Safari is tracking your every move is to use a specialized tool that checks for tracking cookies and fingerprinting. There are several tools available online, such as Ghostery and CookiePro, which can be downloaded and installed on your browser to detect and block tracking cookies.
How to protect yourself from Safari tracking
To protect yourself from Safari tracking, there are several things you can do:
Clear your browsing history and cookies regularly: This will prevent Safari from keeping track of your movements across the web.
Use a VPN: A Virtual Private Network (VPN) can route your internet traffic through a secure and encrypted connection, making it difficult for anyone to track your activities.
Use a privacy-focused browser: There are several privacy-focused browsers available, such as Brave and Tor, that prioritize user privacy and security.
Use anti-tracking tools: As mentioned earlier, you can use specialized tools to detect and block tracking cookies.
In conclusion, Safari may be silently tracking your every move. By checking your browser settings and using specialized tools, you can uncover if Safari is tracking you and take measures to protect your online privacy. Remember, taking proactive steps to protect your online privacy is essential to safeguard your personal information and stay safe online.
The information Safari gathers will be a real eye-opener for many users who probably had no idea just how prevalent trackers are. With that information in hand, you might be inclined to either stop visiting a site or ensure that the site is incapable of tracking. The good news is that Safari is pretty good at blocking trackers. But having this information at your disposal can help you make informed decisions about how to approach your online behavior. Also: How to get more space in Safari with Compact Layout There are two ways to view this information – on a site-by-site basis or from an all-encompassing dashboard. I’m going to show you how to do both. What you wind up doing with the information is completely up to you. On more than a few occasions, I have stopped viewing sites that used an inordinate amount of trackers (whether they were blocked or not). With that said, how do you see the Safari Privacy Report? Let’s dig in and find out. I’ll demonstrate on Safari 15.6.1 running on a MacBook Pro with MacOS Monterey.
How to view the per-site Privacy Report
1. Open a website
Open Safari and navigate to a site you frequent.
2. Open the Privacy Report
Click the shield icon directly to the left of the Safari address bar (Figure 1). Click “Trackers on This Webpage” (Figure 2). Once you expand the entry, you should see the list of trackers Safari blocked. To be honest, I was surprised at how few Safari caught. And upon a quick refresh, Safari didn’t find any new trackers, leading me to believe the web browser is doing its job. Next, we’ll take a look at the Privacy Report for all sites.
How to view the global Privacy Report
1. Open the Privacy Report pop-up
As you did to open the per-site report, click the shield icon. This time, however, click the circled “i” in the upper left corner of the pop-up to reveal the global Privacy Report (Figure 3). If you expand any one of the entries in the Websites tab, you’ll see a listing of all the trackers Safari blocked (Figure 4). The Trackers tab retains an even more in-depth look at the trackers Safari has blocked (Figure 5).
What can you do with this information?
The Safari Privacy Report is a tool that gives you information; it’s not a way to take action. The reason for that is that the web browser has already taken action by blocking the trackers. What you’re seeing is the fruit of Safari’s labor. However, as I said earlier, you can use that information to make informed decisions about the websites you visit. Even though Safari might block a tracker, that doesn’t mean the tracker is going to stop trying to do its job. For instance, Safari blocked branch.io and google-analytics.com from tracking me on Twitter, but they keep trying (and failing… thanks to Safari). But now that I know Twitter is trying to put those trackers on me, if that concerned me, I might opt to stop visiting the site, or use a web browser for Twitter that is even more aggressive at blocking trackers (such as Firefox with its Custom option for Enhanced Tracker Protection). These days, trusting websites can be a dangerous proposition. You should keep yourself informed on what’s happening with the sites you visit, so you and your privacy can be better protected.
