Safari 17 Enhanced Privacy breaks websites?

[Populus]

Hello.

After installing Safari 17, I’ve seen a new option under Privacy -> Advanced. It says “enhanced protection against tracking and fingerprinting” or something along the lines. And it’s initially selected only for private browsing tabs.

However, I’ve enabled it for all kind of navigation. For all tabs. And the first website I’ve seen (Max) appears to lack some icons/images… they look like they are broken.

Is this because of this enhanced protection against tracking and fingerprinting? Or it’s just that the Max website is a bit broken?

Would you leave this option enabled, on Safari 17 (macOS), iOS 17 and iPadOS 17? For all websites? Or it breaks too many things?

Thank you.

 

[Iwavvns]

Hello.

After installing Safari 17, I’ve seen a new option under Privacy -> Advanced. It says “enhanced protection against tracking and fingerprinting” or something along the lines. And it’s initially selected only for private browsing tabs.

However, I’ve enabled it for all kind of navigation. For all tabs. And the first website I’ve seen (Max) appears to lack some icons/images… they look like they are broken.

Is this because of this enhanced protection against tracking and fingerprinting? Or it’s just that the Max website is a bit broken?

Would you leave this option enabled, on Safari 17 (macOS), iOS 17 and iPadOS 17? For all websites? Or it breaks too many things?

Thank you.

If it were me, I would leave it on. If it breaks too many websites then I would not return to those websites. Having websites being broken with that setting tells me that the website developers possibly don't understand the harm they're doing where privacy is concerned. I feel it is best to never be so reliant on any single website that you can't leave at a moments notice.. nobody should be that important in your life that you can't ban them for violating your privacy.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Possibly. I noticed after I enabled it for ‘all browsing’ that it was starting to break some websites from logging in and other random things. Turned it off and that fixed my issues.

 

[Populus]

If it were me, I would leave it on. If it breaks too many websites then I would not return to those websites. Having websites being broken with that setting tells me that the website developers possibly don't understand the harm they're doing where privacy is concerned. I feel it is best to never be so reliant on any single website that you can't leave at a moments notice.. nobody should be that important in your life that you can't ban them for violating your privacy.

Okay, I’ll do that. I’ll leave it turned on and see what happens. If browsing isn’t unbearable, I’ll leave it on.

Thank you!

 

[Iwavvns]

Okay, I’ll do that. I’ll leave it turned on and see what happens. If browsing isn’t unbearable, I’ll leave it on.

Thank you!

I just think the problem is with the developers and third-party junk. I do a lot of web development and I see lots of people using font awesome, google API's, google fonts, etc. People need to learn how to do the webdev work themselves and stop using all of the third-party garbage that makes things easier. All of these things help a website look better but they all can also be used to track people across websites. Website developers need to ask themselves what is more important, visitor privacy or website aesthetics? I actually don't care how a website looks so long as everything works.

 

[jb310]

If you really like Safari but want to view certain websites, why not use a third-party browser specifically for viewing those websites that are broken? Firefox has a lot of privacy-focused extensions you can install, or you can try some Chromium-based browser with privacy features built in (like Brave).

The latter would probably work especially well considering how many web developers build their sites specifically to work with Chrome / Chromium-based browsers.

Then just use Safari for the majority of websites you visit that don't have issues.

 

[Populus]

If you really like Safari but want to view certain websites, why not use a third-party browser specifically for viewing those websites that are broken? Firefox has a lot of privacy-focused extensions you can install, or you can try some Chromium-based browser with privacy features built in (like Brave).

The latter would probably work especially well considering how many web developers build their sites specifically to work with Chrome / Chromium-based browsers.

Then just use Safari for the majority of websites you visit that don't have issues.

Yeah, I usually install a secondary or even a third browser whenever I format my Mac, just in case. And those are Brave and Firefox respectively.

However, on Firefox I have to install some kind of Ad-Blocker unlike Brave. As far as I remember, uBlock Origin was the best open source ad-blocker, right?

 

[jb310]

As far as I remember, uBlock Origin was the best open source ad-blocker, right?

It still is. 👌 I have it installed on Brave too (instead of using the built-in adblocker)

 

[Populus]

It still is. 👌 I have it installed on Brave too (instead of using the built-in adblocker)

Any real benefit on doing that? Probably the fact that the built-in one isn’t open source… do you disable Brave’s built-in adblocker before installing Ublock Origin?

 

[Iwavvns]

Yeah, I usually install a secondary or even a third browser whenever I format my Mac, just in case. And those are Brave and Firefox respectively.

However, on Firefox I have to install some kind of Ad-Blocker unlike Brave. As far as I remember, uBlock Origin was the best open source ad-blocker, right?

Yep, it still is.. been using Firefox with ublock origin for quite a while and it's my go to for Firefox.

 

[jb310]

Any real benefit on doing that? Probably the fact that the built-in one isn’t open source… do you disable Brave’s built-in adblocker before installing Ublock Origin?

YouTube complains about Brave's built-in adblocker, but doesn't seem to notice when I use uBlock Origin. I don't know if Brave has improved their stuff since then, but I always just leave the Brave adblocker disabled now.

 

[Iwavvns]

YouTube complains about Brave's built-in adblocker, but doesn't seem to notice when I use uBlock Origin. I don't know if Brave has improved their stuff since then, but I always just leave the Brave adblocker disabled now.

True, ublock origin just plays the video without a page refresh or an ad blocker warning. I think the Brave staff could learn from ubo.

 

[Populus]

True, ublock origin just plays the video without a page refresh or an ad blocker warning. I think the Brave staff could learn from ubo.

Honestly, I’ve been using Brave from time to time (my main browser is still Safari) on my Mac and I haven’t had any trouble with YouTube. Maybe I’m just lucky…

 

[sunnyjohn2]

I have a problem with Safari and broken websites, too. After Safari failed to render any website properly, even assuming the website actually appeared. I cleared the cache with Control/Option/E. That improved things but I still am getting broken websites. I tried disabling "Use advanced tracking and fingerprinting protection" in the Advanced tab of settings but that has made no difference. Like other posters, I have a shortcut to another browser, Firefox. If Safari fails to open or render a website, I simply copy the URL, shortcut to Firefox and paste in the URL. Safari is also unhappy about opening some You Tube sites, so, again, I use Firefox. I still have Safari as my default browser because I like a lot of the facilities it offers but, really, for Apple's own browser, it is so buggy it's not true!

 

[ifxf]

Typical Apple solution, no fine grain control. I have it disabled and use an ad block extension that allows me to override its settings on a per website instance.

 

[profdraper]

IPadOS Safari is regularly dreadful, erroring, not displaying correctly, not loading sites ect - regularly requires flushing the cache & history to re-set it & this requires navigation elsewhere rather than providing in-browser. For whatever reason, this is far, far worse than the MacOS version. Main solution seems to be to use Edge or Firefox, whatever. But Safari seems to be the only one on iPadOS that provides constant visual access to bookmarks.

Oh yeah - what is it with Safari & YouTube? Just dreadful, suppendly skips back to the beginning, or hangs forever, or not to mention the dreadful relationship with plugins and supposed ‘ad-blocking’. Really primitive this one.