Apple’s Safari is now the only major iOS browser to support the Do Not Track initiative
The number of major iOS Web browsers that support the Do Not Track initiative is down to one. As pointed out by Macworld, Apple’s built-in Safari is now the only popular option to currently allow users to take advantage of the privacy option.
Google’s Chrome previously supported the feature, but that changed with an update that arrived earlier this week. In the change over to Apple’s rendering engine, the browser also disables Data Saver, in-browser Cookie settings, auto-detect encoding, and enterprise support.
Safari can still offer the feature, unlike Chrome and Firefox, because it can make changes to the header request sent to a specific site.
But most users probably don’t worry about Do Not Track anyway. Macworld has more on why the initiative has gone mostly nowhere:
DNT was poorly implemented from the outset and there’s little reason to support it. DNT is essentially a message to advertisers that says “please don’t track this browser.” But advertisers are free to disregard this request, and many do. It is so useless that major sites like Yahoo decided to ignore it too. Most browser makers don’t even turn it on by default and bury it in the browser settings. For PC and Mac users, a far better option is to use aggressive anti-tracking browser extensions such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Privacy Badger.
The best privacy option now in Chrome is to use Incognito Mode. Sites can track you, but only for the specific browsing session.
Better blocking
An even better way to banish ads is to use content blocker on Safari. The feature officially arrived with iOS 9 last fall. For more information about what exactly ad blockers can do, and a few suggestions, take a look at our how to.
At least for me, I’ve been using Purify on my iPhone and iPads and have really been pleased. It costs $1.99 on the App Store, but there are also a number of free options to select from.
For other news today, see: Apple Pay coming to ATMs to enable card-less withdrawals, Maybe $100 was too much to pay for an Apple Pencil, and Apple has a secret team working on virtual reality technology.
