Apple Breaks Identity Tracking in Safari and Shuts Down Short-Lived Cookies

In a blog post published by the Safari engine team this week, Apple confirmed what industry insiders already knew: the company has broken the ability of identity resolution companies to track users in the Safari browser. Cookies with short expiration dates have completely stopped working in Safari, and Apple has also countered CNAME cloaking techniques and other methods used to identify users without cookies.

Zach Edwards, founder of Decrypt Ads and a cybersecurity researcher, said on "The Big Story" podcast that it is like a game of cat and mouse, where the cat sees almost everything the mouse does and slowly places its pieces to close off any escape route it plans. He added that some technical workarounds may work temporarily, but he sees nothing impossible for Apple to shut down, and that the advertising industry must take consent and safer identity methods seriously.

The move comes as part of a long series of confrontations between Apple and advertising companies. Identity resolution companies build alternative identifiers to cookies that link user activity across websites and apps, which measurement and targeting tools rely on. With Safari closing these pathways, companies relying on those identifiers face growing pressure to transition to solutions based on first-party data and explicit consent.

The same episode addressed a Decrypt Ads report on 2,100 "junk content" sites generated by AI and linked to programmatic ad chains, featuring fake author profiles. Edwards warned that automatically generated content sites are growing faster than they can be slowed down, and that they will pose specific challenges beyond what the industry has experienced with traditional made-for-advertising sites and content farms.

What do these terms mean?

Identity Resolution: A set of technologies that attempt to link user activity across different devices, websites, and apps to build a unified profile, used by advertisers for targeting and measurement.

Cookies: Small files stored by the browser that hold information about a site visit, used to remember logins or track behavior.

CNAME Cloaking: A technique that makes a domain belonging to an ad tech company appear as if it is the website's own domain, bypassing browser cookie restrictions.

Programmatic Advertising: The automated buying and selling of ad space via digital auction platforms, without direct negotiation between publisher and advertiser.