Under Apple’s Safari, here’s how the cookies will crumble
New privacy features in Apple’s Safari browser seek to make it tougher for companies such as Facebook to track you.
Companies have long used cookies to remember your past visits. This can be helpful for saving sign-in details and preferences. But now they’re also being used to profile you in order to fine-tune advertising to your tastes and interests.
Cookie use goes beyond visiting a particular website. As other sites embed Facebook “like” and “share” buttons, for instance, Facebook’s servers are being pinged and can access your stored cookies. That means Facebook now knows you frequent celebrity gossip sites or read news with a certain political bent. Ads can be tailored to that.