Newcomer iOS 17 continues to surprise us as developers test every corner of its first beta version. Something interesting that has been found is that some system applications detect web addresses you share with other people and change them if they are too long. What seems like a detail hides a lot of potential.
It’s all about privacy: Some web addresses you share contain elements that could become identifiers that trackers could use to monitor your web activity, and Apple has decided to nip that in the bud. Bad news for those trackers and services that rely on selling that information.
Tracking is going to get complicated with iOS 17
Let’s get technical to understand what is happening: some web addresses that we share contain parameters, plugins called Queries that are used in the PHP language to determine certain aspects of our activity on the network. For example, the raw URL of a website article can be:
webdenoticias.com/articulo/35351
But if you have accessed that article from instagram using an iPhone, the URL you use can be:
webdenoticias.com/articulo/35351?dispositivo=iphone&?origen=instagram
You see the pattern, right? they are variables that are added to the web address, which feed many data tracking tools. iOS 17 wants to put an end to that, identifying those variables that can be used against our privacy and deleting them so that the address used is the original one.
The consequence may be that many tools that measure the origin of web traffic, analytics on which many advertising campaigns depend, see your data skewed and “blurred”. iOS 17 users will hide the path they have taken to reach a specific web address. They can also suffer from affiliate links, which are very dependent on these types of addresses.
These services will have to adapt, because Safari is still the default browser for millions of people who use an iPhone. But Apple is being Apple in this regard: privacy as a user advocacy and marketing tool.
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