safari privacy report trackers

How-To Geek

How to check which websites are tracking you on safari.

In addition to protecting you from trackers, Safari can also tell you which websites have tried to follow you around the web.

Safari prevents advertiser's trackers from following you all over the web. It can also tell you which websites tried to collect data on you, and how many it's blocked. Here's how to generate your privacy report on Safari.

First, open Safari on your Mac from the Launchpad or by searching for it on Spotlight . Click "Safari" in the menu bar at the top left.

Select "Privacy Report."

Safari will then launch a new window with details including how many trackers it blocked from profiling you, the percentage of websites you visited that had trackers, and more.

You can also scroll through the list of websites and see the number of trackers they used.

Click the "Trackers" tab to browse the trackers' names, the companies that made them, and how many times Safari detected them during your browsing sessions.

You can also access Safari's Privacy Report tools while you're browsing to instantly check how intrusive a website you're visiting might be.

To do so, go to the website you want to inspect, and then click the shield icon to the left of the address bar. In the window that appears, you'll see how many third-party trackers Safari prevented from keeping tabs on you.

Click the "Trackers on This Web Page" drop-down arrow to see the full list of trackers.

Safari takes care of trackers by default. If you want to make sure it's active, though, just click "Safari" in the menu bar, and then select "Preferences."

Click the "Privacy" tab, and then select the box next to "Prevent Cross-Site Tracking" if it's not already checked.

If you want to protect yourself even further, there are many more privacy tools available in the Safari iPhone and iPad app .

Safari’s Privacy Report and Cross-Site Tracking Explained

Want to find which companies are tracking you across the web? With Safari’s Privacy Report it’s easy to find that out.

Do you value your online privacy? Many major tech companies, such as Google and Facebook, rely on collecting your data to use with advertisers. But as part of Apple’s defense of user privacy, it includes a Privacy Report in Safari to help you find out exactly which websites are collecting your data, so you can learn which sites are best left alone if you want to keep your data yours.

Let’s discuss Safari’s Privacy Report and how it relates to cross-site tracking.

What Is Cross-Site Tracking?

When you browse the internet, some companies use trackers to monitor your activity across multiple websites. If you don’t have appropriate protections in place, someone is almost certainly tracking you right now.

In order to track your activity, websites may use scripts or place files called cookies on your device that uniquely identify you and send information back to the source. Advertisers can then use the harvested data to present you with targeted ads. If you’ve ever seen an online advertisement that seems eerily relevant to you and your current situation, some form of tracking is likely the cause.

Related: Ways Google Can Track You and How to Stop or View it

While not all websites attempt to stalk you across the internet, some most certainly do. Social media companies can even use Like or Share buttons that you voluntarily click to monitor your activity on other sites.

Such behavior may sound like a major privacy breach—and in some ways it is. Generally, you don’t opt in to tracking and must instead find ways to prevent the practice by using browser settings or additional security tools. Luckily, Safari has a powerful feature that should thwart most tracking attempts.

Disable Cross-Site Tracking in Safari

Here’s how to prevent cross-site tracking in Safari on Mac:

• Go to Safari > Preferences .
• Click the Privacy tab.
• Tick Prevent cross-site tracking .

For extra protection, you should also tick Hide IP address from trackers , which prevents websites from profiling you using your unique IP address . Enabling cross-site tracking prevention also grants you access to Safari’s comprehensive—and often damning—Privacy Report.

Reading Safari’s Privacy Report

When you enable cross-site tracking prevention in Safari, you activate the browser’s Privacy Report. Any time you visit a website that attempts to track you, Safari gathers information and presents it in an easy-to-read format.

By clicking the shield icon to the left of your address bar, you can see how many trackers your browser has blocked on the current page. If you click Trackers on This Web Page , you’ll see exactly what items Safari prevented from tracking you.

For even more info, you can click the Information (i) button to open a detailed report from the past 30 days. The Trackers prevented from profiling you section at the top of the report displays the number of trackers Safari recently thwarted. Additionally, Websites that contacted trackers shows the percentage of sites that attempted to track you.

You can either opt to view a list of Websites and their associated items or simply show the Trackers themselves. The Websites overview is great for identifying which sites are performing the most tracking. In the Trackers overview, clicking the disclosure triangle beside an entry displays the websites that attempted to stalk you with that item.

When you read Safari’s Privacy report, the amount of cross-site tracking that takes place is immediately apparent. Evidently, switching cross-site tracking off exposes you to some serious stalking across multiple sites. If you value your privacy, you’d be wise to leave all tracking prevention tools firmly in the on position.

Cross-Site Tracking Prevention Protects Your Privacy

We’ve covered the main aspects of Safari’s Privacy Report. Generally, unless you’re curious, you don’t need to pay constant attention to which trackers your browser has blocked. However, the Privacy Report is great for initially understanding how often advertisers attempt to track you and which websites are the worst culprits.

How to check the Privacy Report for website tracking in Safari

Quick… how rampant are trackers on the sites you visit? Do you know? Do you care to know? If you use the Safari browser on MacOS, you have everything you need to view that information built right into the browser. The tool in question is called the Privacy Report, and it's easy to access and use. With Privacy Report, you can see the reported domains as well as the sites that tracked you from those domains. 

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The information Safari gathers will be a real eye-opener for many users who probably had no idea just how prevalent trackers are. With that information in hand, you might be inclined to either stop visiting a site or ensure that the site is incapable of tracking. 

The good news is that Safari is pretty good at blocking trackers. But having this information at your disposal can help you make informed decisions about how to approach your online behavior.

Also: How to get more space in Safari with Compact Layout

There are two ways to view this information -- on a site-by-site basis or from an all-encompassing dashboard. I'm going to show you how to do both. What you wind up doing with the information is completely up to you. On more than a few occasions, I have stopped viewing sites that used an inordinate amount of trackers (whether they were blocked or not).  

With that said, how do you see the Safari Privacy Report? Let's dig in and find out. I'll demonstrate on Safari 15.6.1 running on a MacBook Pro with MacOS Monterey .

How to view the per-site Privacy Report

1. open a website.

Open Safari and navigate to a site you frequent. 

2. Open the Privacy Report

Click the shield icon directly to the left of the Safari address bar ( Figure 1 ).

Figure 1:  The shield icon is how you access the Privacy Report in Safari.

Click "Trackers on This Webpage" ( Figure 2 ).

Figure 2:  I'm about to glance at the amount of trackers Safari blocked on Facebook.

Once you expand the entry, you should see the list of trackers Safari blocked. To be honest, I was surprised at how few Safari caught. And upon a quick refresh, Safari didn't find any new trackers, leading me to believe the web browser is doing its job.

Next, we'll take a look at the Privacy Report for all sites. 

How to view the global Privacy Report

1. open the privacy report pop-up.

As you did to open the per-site report, click the shield icon. This time, however, click the circled "i" in the upper left corner of the pop-up to reveal the global Privacy Report ( Figure 3 ).

Figure 3 : The Global Privacy Report displays all the tracker information you need.

If you expand any one of the entries in the Websites tab, you'll see a listing of all the trackers Safari blocked ( Figure 4 ).

Figure 4 :   Safari blocked 44 trackers on wdrb.com.

The Trackers tab retains an even more in-depth look at the trackers Safari has blocked ( Figure 5 ).

Figure 5 : Safari has blocked a considerable number of trackers.

What can you do with this information?

The Safari Privacy Report is a tool that gives you information; it's not a way to take action. The reason for that is that the web browser has already taken action by blocking the trackers. What you're seeing is the fruit of Safari's labor.

However, as I said earlier, you can use that information to make informed decisions about the websites you visit. Even though Safari might block a tracker, that doesn't mean the tracker is going to stop trying to do its job. 

For instance, Safari blocked branch.io and google-analytics.com from tracking me on Twitter, but they keep trying (and failing… thanks to Safari). But now that I know Twitter is trying to put those trackers on me, if that concerned me, I might opt to stop visiting the site, or use a web browser for Twitter that is even more aggressive at blocking trackers ( such as Firefox with its Custom option for Enhanced Tracker Protection).

These days, trusting websites can be a dangerous proposition. You should keep yourself informed on what's happening with the sites you visit, so you and your privacy can be better protected.

More how-tos

How to find out if an airtag is tracking you, the best vpns for iphone and ipad: expert tested, the best mobile vpns: expert tested.

What is Privacy Report in Safari and How to Enable It

When you’re surfing the internet say for some info, or videos, or anything, you are being translated into visitors on the other end. This means, your internet activity on the websites you visit would, in turn, be used as a source of understanding your behavior by the website admin.

Now, this is the usual and healthy barter, but things go out of hand when there are third-party trackers or in other words, cross-site tracking. This could get intrusive from the user’s POV and it is a sign of an unhealthy web relationship too.

Here’s what the privacy report could do to educate you about these cross-site trackers and keep you more aware of Safari’s attempts to help secure your internet presence.

What is Privacy Report in Safari

A privacy report in Safari is a visual representation of the number of websites Safari has blocked from tracking your internet activity. In essence, Safari is making your internet space a secure and personal one.

For quite some time now, Safari has been doing this a little beyond your knowledge and vision. Basically, Safari has been blocking third-party web trackers from profiling you and your internet activity for a while now. Safari is even speculated to block web tracking from Google Analytics with the new macOS Big Sur update.

How to Enable Privacy Report on Your Safari Homepage

Mostly, the privacy report would be a default addition on your upgraded Safari homepage with the Big Sur update . But, if it’s not, here’s what you can do.

Open Safari on your Mac and click on the toggle icon on the bottom right corner of the page.

In the pop-up menu, tick the tiny box next to ‘Privacy Report’.

Now, you’d start receiving a privacy report updates for the past 7 days on your browser home screen. Click on the report for further info.

A comprehensive tracking report would appear. You can toggle between the ‘Websites’ and ‘Trackers’ buttons for further understanding. Here, you would find the privacy report of all cross-site trackers for up to 30 days.

The ‘Websites’ side only gives an overview of the websites and the number of trackers for each website.

Whereas the ‘Trackers’ side would reveal cross-site trackers, the owners of these tracking devices, and how many sites these trackers were seen on.

How to Manually Check Privacy Report Without Enabling it

On your Safari browser home screen, pull down the top menu bar and click on the ‘Safari’ button.

In the Safari drop-down menu, select ‘Privacy Report’.

This would show you the same privacy (tracking) report as shown above.

How to Add or Remove the Privacy Report Icon from the Toolbar

The privacy report icon would be a default setting on your upgraded Safari toolbar. Click this tiny icon next to the URL bar to instantly see the number of blocked trackers from any website you’re on. You can further click on ‘Trackers on this web page’ to know who is blocked.

If you want to remove or move this icon elsewhere, start by clicking on the ‘View’ button in the top menu bar.

Now, select ‘Customise Toolbar’ in the dropdown.

To remove the privacy report icon , drag the icon from the toolbar and place it back into its dedicated spot in the window. Once you’ve removed the icon from the toolbar, click on ‘Done’.

To move the icon elsewhere , drag the icon again to anywhere you’d like to place it in the toolbar from its original spot in the customize toolbar window. Then, click on the ‘Done’ button.

Privacy is a huge concern when you’re using the internet. More often than not, information about your online activity may be collected and used without your consent. Safari helps secure your online activity, and this privacy report gives you a clear idea of what and who is being blocked from tracking your online activity.

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How to view the website Privacy Report in Safari

Learn how to review the Privacy Report in Safari on iPhone, iPad, and Mac to find out which sites track your activity when browsing the web.

When you’re browsing websites in Safari , do you ever wonder which of those sites have trackers, what those trackers are, and which other sites you visit have them?

With attention to privacy , Apple’s browser lets you view website Privacy Report with a tap. And the details you’ll find in the Privacy Report are more informative than you might expect. Here, we’ll show you how to view the website Privacy Report and the information you’ll find.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention in Safari

Apple uses what’s called Intelligent Tracking Prevention in Safari . You may have read some of our articles on the feature like those listed below. In a nutshell, Intelligent Tracking Prevention uses on-device learning to limit the tracking of Safari users by the websites and search engines they visit.

The feature is used on iOS and macOS, and is part of the Privacy Report implementation with iOS 14, iPadOS 14, macOS Big Sur, and later.

Here are some useful posts from iDB on Intelligent Tracking Prevention in Safari:

• Another privacy-related Apple ad focuses on Safari’s anti-tracking measures
• Flaws discovered in Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention let users be tracked
• Apple updates latest version of Safari in iOS and macOS to support blocking full third-party cookies

Now, let’s take a look at Safari’s website Privacy Report and the information you’ll see.

View Safari Privacy Report

On iphone and ipad.

• Open Safari on your iPhone or iPad.
• Tap the AA icon on the left of the address bar.
• Select Privacy Report . You’ll see a nice pop-up window containing the Privacy Report and its details.

• Launch Safari.
• From the top menu bar, click Safari > Privacy Report .

Tip: You can also customize the Safari toolbar on Mac and add the Privacy Report button there.

Understanding Safari Privacy Report

Starting at the top of the report, you can see the number of Known trackers prevented and the percentage of Websites that contacted trackers in the last 30 days. And right below that, you’ll see the Most Contacted Tracker and the number of websites that used it.

Next, you can take a look at the Websites tab in the following section. You’ll see a list of sites that contacted trackers and the number of trackers per site. Tap a website, and you’ll see a list of Prevented Trackers for that site.

Tap the Privacy Report arrow at the top of the report to go back and select the Trackers tab. Here, you’ll see a list of the trackers contacted by websites and that number. Tap a tracker, and you can review all of the sites that contacted it.

To go back to the main report page, tap the arrow . You can review more information like Show More near the top. This will give you brief information on Cross-site Trackers and Intelligent Tracking Prevention.

When you finish with the report, hit Done  to close it.

With Apple’s help, Safari prevents trackers from following you across the websites you visit. And it’s actually quite interesting to see which sites use trackers and how many they contact.

Other Safari tips:

• How to create and use profiles in Safari on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
• How to add or remove your credit card details from Safari on iPhone, iPad, or Mac

Understanding Website Trackers And the New Privacy Report In Safari 14

Check out Understanding Website Trackers And the New Privacy Report In Safari 14 at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

No related posts.

Comments: 8 Responses to “Understanding Website Trackers And the New Privacy Report In Safari 14”

I have Safari 11.1.2 on a old Mac using El Capitan. Is my computer too old to get Safari 14? If not how do I get it?

Wiliam: Safari 14 requires Mojave, Catalina or Big Sur.

Gary, isn't this the same what Duckduckgo does?

Bill: Not sure if DuckDuckGo is exactly the same, but Safari certainly stops the trackers if you let it. And without any extension needed.

Almost all web sites try to get you to accept cookies but will (usually) give you the option to turn off all but the essential ones. Does using Safari this way mean that I can ignore this option; i.e., elect to accept all cookies from the website, safe in the knowledge that Safari will block all but the essential ones? (this would make life a lot easier!).

Jasper: That is up to you. Cookies from and for the site will still be saved if you don't opt out. The ones everyone are concerned about are the cross-site trackers (usually advertisers). Of course even those will just track you to show you more relevant ads. Opting out of cookies for the site may disable some of the site functionality, like saving your preferences and login information.

Gary, we have about 30 or so trackers on our report. Quite high, compared to other local business pages I searched and viewed (since it is accessible to anyone). Is there a way to reduce those numbers? I manage our website (WordPress) and my boss is concerned that clients/prospects that visit our website may view that and be alarmed.

Brandan: Identify what they are and remove those features from your site.

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in the last seven days, safari has prevented 118 trackers from profiling you.

What is the risk and how to resolve it......"in the last seven days, safari has prevented 118 trackers from profiling you."

Posted on May 24, 2021 8:23 AM

Posted on May 24, 2021 10:44 AM

Please read https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/view-a-privacy-report-ibrw35004465/mac

I visited the site Aol news.

Safari prevented 14 trackers from tracking my profile..

If you click the Shiel icon left of the gear icon in the Safari toolbar,

dropdown will show the trackers when you click the reveal triangle.

If these ad trackers are not prevented, they will track your activity and possibly direct ads to your page.

Similar questions

• How to manage Safari trackers on iPhone My phone shows that in the last 7 days Safari has prevented 113 trackers from profiling me how do I manage that [Re-Titled by Moderator] 281 4
• New Mac Mini My new Mac has been partially operable for 5 days. I haven't migrated old data yet. When I open Safari it says: in the last 7 days Safari has prevented 32 trackers from tracking you. What does this mean? 1347 5
• Trackers Apple security is reporting a lot of attempted tracks predominantly from google. Is there a way I can stop safari from using google as the search engine when I type into the search bar? 113 1

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How to use Safari's new Privacy Report in macOS Big Sur

Safari has a new Privacy Report

Apple's new Privacy Report in Safari is a feature that you will use constantly — and yet rarely ever look at. Simply by using Safari in macOS Big Sur , you get the benefits of this feature and it will improve your browsing experience.

It aims to do this specifically so that companies who attempt to uniquely identify your Mac, and so track your web usage. Every site you visit requests some information — such as which browser you're using — but that's to give you an optimized web page.

Safari's Privacy Report, and previous features including Intelligent Tracking Protection , blocks everything.

You can ignore it all, you can choose to never even click on the Privacy Report icon that's permanently next to Safari's address bar. If you do view it, though, you can make informed decisions about what you want to allow.

How to view Safari's Privacy Report

• Click on the shield-like icon immediately to the left of Safari's address bar
• Optionally, click on Trackers on this Web Page
• Or click on the i for information icon

Privacy report is presented with a series of increasing information, so you can choose how much you want to know. Just clicking on the shield icon will display options, but it will also show a large icon with the number of trackers on your current site that it has blocked.

Clicking on Trackers on this Web Page , gives you a drop down list that specifies which sites have attempted to track you. Most of these will be advertisers, but you'll commonly also see google-analytics.com listed.

That's a tracker that sites use to assess the traffic they're getting and you might be fine with them doing that, but you can't allow that one tracker access. You can't actually change any settings at all in this drop down list.

If you click on the information icon, Safari opens a separate window with all the detail it has. You can also go straight to this fuller report by choosing Privacy Report... in the Safari menu.

Safari's Privacy Report

Safari's Privacy Report also shows a number of trackers that it has prevented. However, rather than just for the current site and your current visit there, it lists how many trackers it has blocked over the last 30 days.

It also splits out the results into how many websites you visited that had trackers blocked, and how many trackers there were. It singes out the most-contacted tracker, too.

The use of 30 days is significant. When Apple added Intelligent Tracking Protection to Safari in 2018, it included making the browser count how long it is since you clicked yes to allow a site to place a cookie on your Mac.

If you've given this permission and you keep using the site, nothing changes. But if you stop using it, then after 30 days, the Mac now removes the cookie.

So if you're concerned about a site, you can now open Privacy Report. It will show you what sites have been attempting to use trackers in the last 30 days.

You can't change any settings in Privacy Report itself, and really there isn't a great deal you can do anywhere. But you can choose to remove a site's ability to track you if you change your mind about its cookies.

How to remove cookies

• Open Safari and choose Preferences
• Choose on Privacy
• Click on Manage Website Data...
• After a moment, the Mac will list all sites you've agreed to cookies with
• Scroll to choose the one you're concerned about, then click to select it
• Click the Remove button
• Alternatively, click the Remove All button

Apple does not ask if you're sure when you choose a site and click Remove . However, before you even go to press Remove All , it does caution against removing any cookie data without care.

"These websites have stored data that can be used to track your browsing," it says about the list. "Removing the data may reducing tracking, but may also log you out of websites or change website behavior."

How to get the best out of Privacy Report

Just let Privacy Report do its thing. If you have reason to dislike Apple doing this, you can go to Safari , Preferences , Privacy , and untick Prevent cross-site tracking .

Alternatively, you can use a different browser. But note that Google is expected to implement this similar third-party cookie blocking by 2022 .

Keep up with AppleInsider by downloading the AppleInsider app for iOS, and follow us on YouTube , Twitter @appleinsider and Facebook for live, late-breaking coverage. You can also check out our official Instagram account for exclusive photos.

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Safari iOS 14 Guide: Privacy Report, Built-In Translation, Compromised Password Alerts and More

Apple introduces improvements for almost all of the built-in apps with each new iteration of iOS, and iOS 14 is no exception. For Safari, Apple has added some useful new features like built-in translation and a Privacy Report that provides a rundown on all of the trackers that Safari is blocking.

Speed and Performance Improvements

According to Apple, Safari in iOS 14 features a "blazing-fast JavaScript engine" that makes Safari up to 2x faster than Chrome on Android.

Built-In Translation

Safari in iOS 14 has a built-in translation option that can be used to translate websites to English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Russian, or Brazilian Portuguese, which goes along with the new Translate app that Apple added in the update.

Additional languages to translate to can be added in the Settings app of the ‌iPhone‌, as outlined in the how to below.

• iOS 14: How to Use Safari's Webpage Translation Feature
• How to Translate Text in Apple's Translate App

Password Monitoring and Compromised Password Alerts

Safari in iOS 14 is able to monitor saved passwords, watching for passwords that have been involved in a data breach.

You can see potential problems under the "Security Recommendations" heading in the Passwords section of the Settings app.

Privacy Report

Safari in iOS 14 (and macOS Big Sur) adds a Privacy Report feature that expands on Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention functionality. For the last several years, Apple has been working to prevent cross-site tracking, a feature that websites use to track your internet usage as you browse different sites for ad targeting, analytics, and more.

Any website that uses ads for monetization or an ad network for that same purpose will have these trackers on it, as will any site that uses analytics services like Google Analytics for collecting data on user behavior for site and content improvements.

Safari on ‌iPhone‌ and ‌iPad‌ lists the number of trackers on each site that you visit, the number of trackers Safari has prevented, the number of websites you've visited that have trackers, and a list of the most frequently seen trackers such as Google's DoubleClick.net.

You can get to the Privacy Report section in Safari by tapping on the icon that's two As next to each other and choosing the "Privacy Report" option. Note that you must have cross-site tracking prevention enabled for Privacy Report to work, and Privacy Report will prompt you to enable the feature if it's not turned on already.

• iOS 14: How to Use the Privacy Report Feature in Safari

Picture in Picture

In Safari on ‌iPhone‌, if you're watching a video, you can now tap the Picture in Picture button to watch it in windowed mode, so you can continue browsing another website or doing something else on your ‌iPhone‌ while the video plays. We have more details on Picture in Picture in our Picture in Picture guide .

• How to Use iOS 14's Picture in Picture Mode to Watch YouTube Videos

Launching Websites From Search

If you type a URL like MacRumors.com in the pull down search interface on the ‌iPhone‌, you can hit the "Go" button to open the website directly without having to tap a link in the search results.

Simpler Sign in with Apple

Apple made new tools for developers to allow them to translate existing web accounts to Sign in with Apple, which will hopefully make new options available to ‌iPhone‌, ‌iPad‌, and Mac users who want to convert existing logins to Sign in with Apple, which is more secure.

Tracking Permission

Apps that want to track you across apps and websites to deliver personalized ads will now need to secure user permission to do so. Allow Tracking or Ask App Not to Track are two settings designed for apps, but the feature goes hand in hand with Privacy Report to keep apps from monitoring your app usage and website browsing habits.

iPadOS 14 - Scribble Support

With an ‌iPad‌ running iPadOS 14, you can use the new Scribble feature with Safari to handwrite URLs, Google searches, and more, with the handwritten text then translated to typed text. For more on Scribble, make sure to check out our guide .

Use Another Browser

Not a fan of Safari? In iOS 14 you can set a different browser like Google's Chrome as the default browser that will activate when you tap links.

Other Safari Tutorials

• How to Import Your Safari Bookmarks to Chrome
• How to Delete Cookies in Safari
• How to Clear Safari's Cache

Guide Feedback

Have questions about the new Safari features in iOS 14, know of a feature we left out, or or want to offer feedback on this guide? Send us an email here . If you want to know more about what's new in iOS 14, make sure to check out our iOS 14 roundup .

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Top rated comments.

" Safari in ‌iOS 14‌ features a "blazing-fast JavaScript engine" that makes Safari up to 2x faster than Chrome on Android ." What sort of double speak, trickery, half-truthiness is that! Is it faster than Chrome on iOS or not???

Was there a legal requirement for this statement? I dont see a reason why one would use any other browser on iOS..

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Tips & Tricks

Troubleshooting, how to check privacy report in safari on iphone & ipad.

Have you ever wondered which websites you visit have cookies and ad trackers, and what those trackers are while browsing the web? Well, it’s now possible to check if you use Safari to browse the internet on your iPhone and iPad, and you’ll find the majority of the web uses these cookies. But not to worry, because not only can you easily see which trackers are being used on sites, but you can also block them if you want to.

Apple is putting its users at the forefront of privacy with the latest iOS and iPadOS versions, and the Safari Privacy Report feature is just one example of this. This allows users to check if the sites they visit use trackers (cookies) that may follow them across their web browsing sessions. This is nothing alarming, since most of the trackers are used to deliver personalized ads, like when you’re on a shopping site looking at shoes and later see as for shoes on another different website. Regardless, the latest Safari for iPhone and iPad prevents these cookies and trackers from following you as you visit multiple websites, and you can also see how many have been blocked and what they are from too. And yes, this feature exists on the Mac as well.

How to Check Privacy Report for Websites in Safari

To use this feature, you’ll need to make sure that your iPhone and iPad is running iOS 14/iPadOS 14 or later. Now, without further ado, let’s take a look at the necessary steps.

There you go. Now you’ve learned how to use Safari’s Privacy Report to check the trackers contacted by various websites. Pretty easy, right?

You don’t have to worry about trackers though, since Safari automatically prevents all these trackers from following you across websites. Safari’s Privacy Report makes use of DuckDuckGo’s tracker radar list to safeguard your privacy.

If you scroll down past the current website in the Privacy Report section, you’ll be able to find a list of all websites sorted by the number of trackers that were contacted. You can tap on each website to view more details regarding the trackers, in a similar way.

This is just one of the many privacy features that Apple has introduced with iOS 14. If you’re a privacy buff, you may also be keen on checking out the new Private Wi-Fi Address feature that allows you to use a different MAC address for each network , thereby preventing network operators and observers from tracking your network activity or access your location over time.

Do you use a Mac as your primary computing device? In that case, you’ll be pleased to know that you can check Privacy Report on your Mac too , provided it’s running Safari 14 or later.

We hope you were able to use Safari’s Privacy Report on the iPhone and iPad to get an idea regarding a website’s behavior. What are your overall thoughts on this nifty privacy feature? Have you been enjoying the other new additions to iOS and iPadOS? Do share your valuable opinions and experiences in the comments section down below.

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Related articles:

• How to Check Privacy Report for Websites in Safari on Mac
• How to Turn Off Split Screen in Safari for iPad? Exiting Safari Split Screen in iPadOS
• How to Check Privacy Data for Apps on iPhone, iPad, Mac, & PC
• How to Report Bugs to Apple in macOS Big Sur Beta

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I followed your instructions but on every website I check it gives me the number of “trackers prevented” but when I select Privacy Report it always says “Not enough data to generate a report”. This happens 100% of the time so I don’t see any value in this.

I’m on iPad 14.8 version ” not enough data to generate a report ” is the only response I get . Is there a way of using it other than tapping it in the address bar ? Otherwise , I guess I won’t be seeing any of them .

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How privacy features in iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur prevent apps and websites from tracking you online

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Apple has introduced a new privacy tracking feature in Safari in iOS 14 and macOS 11 Big Sur that will let you know which websites are tracking you and display the trackers that Safari has blocked. This feature helps to give insight into just how many websites employ trackers to track you across the web and market to you using your data.

SEE: iPhone 12 event: What Apple announced at its 2020 Hi Speed event (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

In this tutorial, we’ll delve into this new tracking feature, learning how to enable and disable it as well as keep apps and websites from being able to track you across the web. Also check out Lance Whitney’s tutorial How to view website trackers in mobile Safari from your iPhone or iPad .

What does the privacy report in Safari do?

In iOS 14 and macOS 11, Apple introduced the Privacy Report feature in Safari. This feature displays a report of the website that you’re looking at and what trackers are being used. It shows both trackers that employ cross-site tracking and and those caught by Apple’s intelligent tracking prevention.

By default, Safari will automatically block any cross-site trackers (and use intelligent tracking prevention to ensure that other trackers are blocked as well). It will also report these trackers to you through the privacy report.

Note: If you use any content blockers in Safari, you should note that Safari will block the cross-site trackers itself before the content is allowed to run through the content blocker. So if you have a content blocker installed that does the same kind of cross-site tracking prevention, then it won’t be able to run and filter out the content until Safari has done its own processing first. In our testing, this works the same on both iOS and macOS as of the time of this writing.

SEE: iPhone 12: A cheat sheet (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

How to view the Safari privacy reports on macOS Big Sur

You can also view reports in Safari on macOS by tapping on the privacy report button in the toolbar to the left of the address bar. Doing this will display the information about the current website and the tracker usage on that website ( Figure A ).

The popup that appears when you click on this option in the toolbar lets you see the number of trackers on the current page that have been blocked as well as the URLs for the trackers if you expand the “Trackers on This Webpage” section. If you tap on the “i” button in the corner of this popup, then you’ll be presented with the full Privacy Report ( Figure B ) for all of your browsing history for the past 30 days.

Inside the Privacy Report, you can view the last 30 days of blocking history for trackers. You can view it by website that is responsible for the tracker, or the URL of the trackers themselves. It also keeps track of the total number of trackers that it has blocked during this time period. This information is stored locally on your computer and deleted after the 30 days.

How to view the Safari privacy reports on iOS 14

On iOS 14, you can view the privacy report for the current website by tapping on the Reader icon in the address bar, then selecting Privacy Report ( Figure C ).

Once you’ve done this, the privacy report will be visible and you can see how many trackers have been prevented from tracking you across the web ( Figure D ). When viewing the report, you can toggle between websites responsible for the trackers and the URLs of the trackers themselves. This information is stored locally on your device for 30 days and then deleted.

You can also view reports in Safari on macOS by tapping on the privacy report button in the toolbar to the left of the address bar. The same report interface will be displayed on macOS as in the iOS screenshot above.

How to enable or disable tracking prevention on iOS 14

For Safari’s cross site tracking on iOS 14, see our previously posted article on How to view website trackers in mobile Safari from your iPhone or iPad .

The iOS 14 tracking prevention is enabled by default in Safari. You can disable this feature if you wish by following these steps.

• Open the Settings app.
• Select Safari.
• For Prevent Cross-Site Tracking, disable the switch.

In addition to this setting, iOS and iPadOS 14 have another setting that can be disabled so that individual apps cannot use cross-site tracking to follow you around online. To ensure this feature is enabled and keeping you safe, follow these steps.

• Select Privacy | Tracking.
• Disable the option for Allow Apps to Request to Track.

With this option disabled, you will not see any requests to track you and apps that use this feature will automatically be denied. This option will disable apps from being able to request to track you, but doesn’t guarantee that apps cannot still track you through other means. Apps may still be able to track you even without requesting permissions through this feature.

macOS Safari also enables cross-site tracking prevention by default, but it can be disabled by doing the following:

• Open Safari.
• Select Safari | Preferences (or press Command + , ).
• Select Privacy.
• Uncheck the option for “Prevent cross-site tracking” ( Figure C ).

How to ensure iOS apps cannot utilize cross-site tracking

iOS and iPadOS 14 have another setting that can be disabled so that individual apps cannot use cross-site tracking to follow you around online. To ensure this feature is enabled and keeping you safe, follow these steps.

• Open the Settings app
• Select Privacy | Tracking
• Disable the option for Allow Apps to Request to Track

How to enable or disable tracking prevention in Safari on macOS

Just like on iOS, on the macOS version of Safari there is also cross-site tracking prevention turned on by default, but it can be disabled by doing the following:

• Open Safari
• Select Safari | Preferences (or press Command + , )
• Select Privacy
• Uncheck the option for “Prevent cross-site tracking” ( Figure C )

While cross-site tracking prevention can be disabled by users, it is recommended that you keep this setting on. By doing so, you’ll see less targeted advertisements online, and your data cannot be as readily shared among online marketing companies, which is a plus for your privacy. There may be legitimate use cases where you will want to disable the feature: For instance if you’re experiencing loading or rendering issues on certain websites, then you may want to disable it when viewing those specific websites, then re-enable it after.

macOS doesn’t have the same ability as iOS

macOS does not feature the same ability as iOS which lets you easily disable trackers inside of applications. I hope that this feature will come in a later update to provide the ability to disable cross-site tracking within apps. Until then, you can utilize firewall apps such as Little Snitch to block certain web traffic from your computer for trackers and other services.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to include additional features.

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How to use the iPhone’s new App Privacy Report

You can easily see what your apps are accessing.

By Barbara Krasnoff , a reviews editor who manages how-tos. She’s worked as an editor and writer for almost 40 years. Previously, she was a senior reviews editor for Computerworld.

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Information is power, and if you’re an iPhone user, you can now get more information about how often your apps access your data (for example, your location or your microphone). The App Privacy Report, which became available with iOS 15.2 , also lets you know each app’s web activity and what domains they attach to.

The feature is off by default, but if your phone has updated to iOS 15.2, it’s very simple to turn on:

• Go to Settings > Privacy > App Privacy Report (which will be at the bottom of the screen)
• Select “Turn On App Privacy Report”

After that, you can follow the same series of selections to see your report. (You can also use this Shortcut for quicker access right from your home screen or a Siri voice command.)

You won’t immediately see any data — it takes time for your phone to collect the data and assemble the report, but you can start to see results in just a few minutes. The report will let you know the following:

• Which apps accessed your data within the last seven days. If you tap on one of the apps listed, you will be able to see exactly when the last accesses were. You will probably have to drill down a couple of pages.

• App network activity. Tap on the app, and you’ll see which domains were contacted.

• Most contacted domains. Tap on each domain name, and you’ll get a list of which apps contacted that domain and when.

If for any reason you want to turn off the App Privacy Report, just go back to Settings > Privacy > Privacy Report and select “Turn Off App Privacy Report” at the bottom of the page. Be aware, however, that you will lose any existing information that you’ve collected up until then.

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Safari User Guide

• Get started
• Go to a website
• Bookmark webpages to revisit
• See your favorite websites
• Use tabs for webpages
• Import bookmarks and passwords
• Pay with Apple Pay
• Autofill credit card info
• View links from friends
• Keep a Reading List
• Hide ads when reading
• Translate a webpage
• Download items from the web
• Add passes to Wallet
• Save part or all of a webpage
• Print or create a PDF of a webpage
• Interact with text in a picture
• Change your homepage
• Customize a start page
• Create a profile
• Block pop-ups
• Make Safari your default web browser
• Hide your email address
• Manage cookies
• Clear your browsing history
• Browse privately
• Prevent cross-site tracking
• See who tried to track you
• Change Safari settings
• Keyboard and other shortcuts

Change Privacy settings in Safari on Mac

To change these settings, choose Safari > Settings, then click Privacy.

Open Safari for me

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Unlocking the iPhone’s Accessibility Features for the Elderly

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Apple’s Safari browser has made privacy one of its top priorities. With each new update, the browser includes more security features to protect its users’ privacy. The recent update to Safari comes with a new feature called Privacy Report. The feature provides a report on how Safari protects its users from cross-site tracking.

So, what exactly is cross-site tracking? It’s a technique that companies use to monitor user activity across different websites. Essentially, they place small pieces of code, also known as cookies or scripts, on different websites that a user visits. Then, when the user visits another site that hosts those same cookies or scripts, the companies can collect information on the user’s activity across both sites.

Cross-site tracking can be used for harmless activities like remembering your preferences on a shopping site, but it can also be used for more invasive actions like tracking your online behavior and selling that information to third-party advertisers. This is where Safari’s Privacy Report comes in.

Privacy Report is a simple yet powerful tool that allows users to monitor cross-site tracking activities in real time. The report shows how many trackers Safari blocked on each website the user visited, as well as how many trackers were used on a particular website. The feature even goes as far as telling users which trackers were blocked and which were allowed.

The Privacy Report feature also provides an overview of how frequently the website the user visited has been used for cross-site tracking purposes. In addition, the feature provides a list of the most used trackers and websites that are used for cross-site tracking purposes.

This useful tool gives users more control over their online presence by providing them with essential information about the trackers and scripts being used to monitor their activity online. This information can help users make informed decisions about what websites they visit and how they browse the internet.

To activate the Privacy Report feature in Safari, users need to click on the “Privacy Report” button located to the left of the website address bar. The feature is available on all Apple devices running the latest version of Safari.

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How to get Safari's Privacy Report stamp of approval for your website

Apple has declared privacy a “fundamental human right” and now they’re putting their money where their mouth is, and doing something about it. Apple’s Safari 14 browser and its Privacy Report names, shames and prevents websites that use cross-site trackers to profile web users.

How does the Privacy Report look like in Safari 14?

Could safari change the way people browse the web, how your website can get safari’s privacy stamp of approval, how does safari’s privacy report work, what does safari’s intelligent tracking protection (itp) actually do, what’s the motivation behind duckduckgo’s tracker radar list, is there a risk of plausible being added to duckduckgo’s list, what will google and the adtech do next.

From the release of Safari 14 on September 16th, the privacy shield icon is prominently placed next to the address bar and with a click, you can see which trackers a website you’re on uses to track your visit. Or on mobile devices, you can tap the “Aa” button in the address bar.

Users can get a more detailed Privacy Report by clicking on the (i) button or selecting “Privacy Report” on the mobile devices. This gives you an overview of the trackers you have encountered across the sites you’ve visited in the last 30 days.

It lists how many trackers have been prevented from profiling you and the percentage of websites you visited that contacted trackers. It also highlights the most contacted tracker.

The Privacy Report also lists (shames) the sites that use the most trackers and the most widely used trackers across the sites you visited.

This is a similar feature to what open-source and privacy-friendly browsers such as Firefox and Brave have had for a while. But Safari is a much more widely used browser, it puts the Privacy Report up front and center, and raises awareness of these issues to a new level with their large, mainstream audience. Safari’s browser market share is at 17% compared to 4% for Firefox.

People have already started complaining about the shocking number of trackers they are seeing on their favorite sites. Or the irony behind the “we care about your privacy” messages on sites with multiple trackers. Or the fact that some sites such as Wikipedia seem to be the good guys and have no trackers at all.

Will Safari’s Privacy Report change the way people browse the web? Will it impact the sites people choose to visit? Will people start preferring sites with fewer or no trackers? Or will everyone become numb to this after seeing the great number of trackers most sites use? It remains to be seen.

It’s likely that this will dramatically raise awareness about the state of the web, the scale of surveillance capitalism and the true cost of “free”.

Safari highlights websites without any trackers with the “this web page did not contact any trackers” message.

The way your website can get Safari’s “stamp of approval” is to reduce the number of trackers you use. Don’t use any services that are “blacklisted” by Apple.

Visit your website using Safari and check what the Privacy Report highlights. Completely remove the known trackers or switch to some friendlier and more privacy-friendly alternatives. Then Safari will list your website as one of the few that do not try to connect to any trackers and you may get a boost with the people that care about this.

Some of the most contacted trackers across the websites are Google Analytics, Google’s DoubleClick advertising trackers, Google Tag Manager and spy pixels from Facebook.

Using Google Analytics on your site? A potential move would be to remove it and replace it with Plausible Analytics. Here’s our Google Analytics vs Plausible Analytics comparison .

Let’s take a closer look at how the Privacy Report works and what websites are considered trackers.

Apple is partnering with DuckDuckGo, and their open-source and publicly available Tracker Radar to expose these trackers. DuckDuckGo’s tracker list is generated automatically using their continuous crawling and analysis of the web.

They are looking for third-party requests that are on multiple websites and which also set cookies or access browser APIs known to be used in fingerprinting.

They’ve found that Google is the biggest tracking company on the web saying that “Google-owned domains are referenced on 93.2% of the sites we surveyed”. This Google-dominance on the web is one of the main reasons we built Plausible and why we believe you should consider removing Google Analytics from your site .

You can see the full list of all the domains on DuckDuckGo’s list .

Websites making calls to specific domains from DuckDuckGo’s Tracker Radar list are listed in Safari’s Privacy Report. Safari shows the number of trackers discovered on the particular site and states the number of “trackers prevented from profiling you”.

Unlike the tracking protection in Brave or Firefox, Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Protection does not block the listed third-party requests. Instead, it prevents them from placing cookies or from accessing the local storage of a device.

This means that Google, Facebook and other adtech companies are prevented from building cross-site profiles of web users for advertising purposes:

Third-party cookies are completely blocked

First-party JS cookies are limited to a maximum of 7 days. This means that cookie-based analytics tools such as Google Analytics may not be as reliable as before in showing new unique visitors or returning visitors. If a person visits your site today and then comes back the following week, they are likely to be listed as another unique visitor again.

Referrer header is truncated and any query parameters are stripped to only show the domain name origin for referring websites with cross-site tracking capabilities.

Intelligent Tracking Protection is turned on by default and applies to all browsers on iOS and iPadOS and not only to Safari. Firefox, Chrome, Brave and others are following the same rules.

Users have the option to turn this off by disabling the “Prevent cross-site tracking” feature in the settings but defaults matter and it is likely that only a tiny percentage of users would disable it.

For full details, see the overview on Cookie Status .

This is what DuckDuckGo said about their motivation behind building the Tracker Radar list in the first place:

“Using the Internet these days feels like being haunted by the ghosts of browsing past. The shoes or headphones you shopped for yesterday are following you around relentlessly today. These creepy ads are powered by hidden trackers, lurking behind most websites. And unfortunately, your shopping habits are just the tip of the iceberg of what they know and can exploit.

“Trackers can pick up your location history, search history, browsing history and more, and from those infer your age, ethnicity, gender, interests, and habits. Companies collate this personal data into a detailed profile, continually auctioning you off to the highest bidders”

Plausible Analytics is a privacy-first analytics tool and we’ve gone great lengths to make our product as privacy-friendly as possible:

We don’t collect any of the data mentioned by DuckDuckGo such as location history, browsing history, interests, habits and such.

There’s no way to identify or to track an individual using Plausible.

We don’t use cookies and any other persistent identifiers.

There’s no way to track people across websites they visit or devices they use.

We also don’t have anything to do with the adtech industry and the surveillance capitalism.

All your website data is 100% yours. We don’t share it with, send it to or sell it to any third parties whatsoever.

You can get a full overview of all the info we collect on your behalf about your visitors in our data policy .

DuckDuckGo’s Tracker Radar is already aware of Plausible as it has discovered calls to us on several websites while crawling the web. We have been discovered alongside many other third-party calls that don’t have anything to do with surveillance capitalism and adtech such as the different content management systems people use to build websites and web fonts.

It lists Plausible with a domain prevalence score of 0.000147. This shows the number of sites that make calls to Plausible. Google Analytics has a domain prevalence score of 0.748.

It lists Plausible with a domain cookie value of 0. This means that we don’t use cookies. Google Analytics has a domain cookie value of 0.273 as it uses multiple cookies.

It gives Plausible a fingerprint score of 1. This presents the sum of all weighted browser APIs accessed and score 1 means “normal use of APIs, not likely used for fingerprinting”. The only API we access is the “Navigator.prototype.userAgent” which is used for many different purposes and is considered “non-suspicious”. Google Analytics has a fingerprint score of 2 which stands for “high use of APIs, possibly for fingerprinting”. Google Analytics is accessing 15 different browser APIs.

Then it’s up to the users of DuckDuckGo’s Tracker Radar (Apple Safari in this case) to decide what criteria to use to block a domain name.

Plausible is currently not blocked nor highlighted by Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Protection as Safari has chosen to block privacy-invasive tools such as those that track people across the web using cookies or those that use browser APIs to profile people.

Apple has made life a little bit more difficult for the adtech industry. Their data collection has become a little bit less accurate and more people can now escape from being continuously tracked and monitored for behavioral insights.

Adtech’s response to this would be to rely less on third-party tracking and move more of the tracking to first-party. There may be an increase in fingerprinting and other alternative ways to track web users without using cookies too.

Apple could respond to that by moving more in the direction of privacy-first browsers such as Brave. Brave for instance blocks all the trackers by default and has several features to prevent fingerprinting enabled by default out of the box.

It will be an exciting “battle” to follow over the upcoming months. It’s great to see such a large company as Apple take a stand against surveillance capitalism and try to make the web a little bit of a better place for everyone.

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Comparisons

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