Apple on Tuesday updated its privacy feature, the Safari Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), allowing the software giant’s web browser to block all third-party cookies. “The long wait is over and the latest update to Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention is here: Full third-party cookie blocking and more safari users, welcome to the future and a safer web!’ tweeted Apple’s Webkit engineer John Wilander who developed the feature.

Wilander further detailed how the move was a major step towards enhancing user privacy and eliminating the concept of exceptions such as “a little bit of cross-site tracking is allowed. Cookies for cross-site resources are now blocked by default across the board. This is a significant improvement for privacy since it removes any sense of exceptions or “a little bit of cross-site tracking is allowed,” Wilander said in his blog.

That update, which is a privacy milestone bans all advertisers and websites from following the user around the internet with commonplace tracking, tracing their user habits.

The move places Apple’s browser two years ahead of Google’s Google Chrome. Google in January said that it will be joining Safari and Firefox in blocking third-party cookies within its Chrome web browser. However, the search giant will be taking a phased approach rather than blocking all browser cookies at once. Justin Schuh, the director at engineering for Chrome in his blog detailing Google’s approach said that the company is intending to develop this feature over time within the next two years.

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