Apple is kicking off a new high-profile ad campaign today focused on Safari. The campaign takes direct aim at other browsers, such as Chrome, where “your browsing is being watched.” Safari, meanwhile, offers several robust privacy protections to protect your web browsing data.
There’s also a new story on Apple’s WebKit blog detailing Privacy Browsing 2.0 for Safari.
The ad emphasizes a few things that can happen when you use other web browsers. For example, data companies can track you across multiple different sites. Your location data can also be collected without your permission, while web extensions can also open you up to a lot of privacy violations.
Safari, meanwhile, offers several privacy protections to keep you and your data safe while browsing the web. One key feature is preventing Intelligent Tracking Prevention. Apple explains:
For a number of years, Intelligent Tracking Prevention has helped protect Safari users from unwanted tracking by using on-device machine learning to stop trackers while allowing websites to function normally.
Every time you visit a website, it gathers data about your device—such as your system configuration—and uses that data to show you webpages that work well on your device. Some companies use this data to try to uniquely identify your device—known as fingerprinting. To prevent this, whenever you visit a website, Safari presents a simplified version of your system configuration. Your Mac looks more like everyone else’s Mac, which dramatically reduces the ability of trackers to uniquely identify your device.
Another feature touted by Apple is link tracking protection:
Some websites add extra information to their URLs in order to track users across other websites. Now this information will be removed from the links users share in Messages and Mail, and the links will still work as expected. This information will also be removed from links in Safari Private Browsing.
And some recent improvements to Privacy Browsing:
Safari introduced private browsing years before any other browser. This year, a significant update provides even greater protection against trackers as users browse the web and from people who might have access to their device. Advanced tracking and fingerprinting protections go even further to help prevent websites from using the latest techniques to track or identify a user’s device. Private Browsing now locks when not in use, allowing a user to keep tabs open even when stepping away from the device.
In addition to the above long-form YouTube video, Apple will also be running privacy-focused ads on social media and the web. “Choose a browser that actually protects your privacy,” the ads tout.
Here’s a look at one of the ads that will be running on social media:
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