Apple’s grudging accommodation of European antitrust rules by allowing third-party app stores on iPhones has left users of its Safari browser exposed to potential web activity tracking.
Developers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk looked into the way Apple implemented the installation process for third-party software marketplaces on iOS with Safari, and concluded Cupertino’s approach is particularly shoddy.
Apple – which advertises Safari as “incredibly private” – evidently has undermined privacy among European Union Safari users through a marketplace-kit: URI scheme that potentially allows approved third-party app stores to follow those users around the web.
I don’t see Apple deliberately sabotaging their platform to maliciously comply and blame the regulation for making users less safe. This was probably an error caused by quick development to comply within a set timeline that will be resolved in the future through software changes.
I’d say it’s probably an oversight. I don’t want to downplay this, it definitively needs to be addressed in some way. But it’s not like there are many marketplaces out there yet (so far the only one I know of is AltStore PAL, and I doubt the creator is out there to track a bunch of people’s web activities).
If you’d read the article, you’d have realized it’s specifically because of a bad implementation by Apple of their URI scheme for handling links.
They’re literally suggesting users use Brave over Safari because it isn’t susceptible to cross-site scripting in the same way.
They urge iOS users in Europe to use Brave rather than Safari because Brave’s implementation checks the origin of the website against the URL to prevent cross-site tracking.
This is anything but Apple propaganda. It’s literally calling Apple out on a huge failure of their own design.
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