In the latest beta of Safari, for both iOS and macOS, a setting labeled "Ask Websites Not to Track Me" was removed. This setting has been around since 2011, but there's an interesting story as to what this actually does. The FTC proposed a setting that would request websites to not track the client browser. The only problem was that websites and its advertisers did not have to comply with this request. This setting is actually more of a security threat than anything in today's world, which is why it is being removed. Because advertisers can build a digital profile of you based on browser settings and other variables, this one setting could be used to add to that digital profile. A massively simplified example would be if Facebook noticed that a browser was searching for dog videos, and that browser was based in Anytown, USA, with macOS 10.11.3 and is requesting websites not to track them. It's that much easier to guess a person's digital identity through browser variables alone. It's truly ironic that this mechanism meant to prevent tracking only facilitated it even more.
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