Apple Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) 2.x
Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), is Apple’s initiative to protect Safari users’ privacy. The first release of ITP, which was in 2017, targeted the usage of third-party cookies. In fact, Apple blocked third-party cookies entirety, which in turn, caused a severe headache for ad tech and mar tech companies because third-party cookies are generally used for tracking visitors and collecting visitor data. Now, Apple is on the move to place limitations and restrictions on how first-party cookies are used within Safari.
These versions of ITP include the following restrictions:
document.cookie
API to a seven-day expiry.Released February 21, 2019.
Released April 24, 2019.
Document.referrer property
.Released September 23, 2019.
CNAME-cloaking defence feature to ITP released in Safari 14, macOS Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, iOS 14, and iPadOS 14. All cookies created by a third-party CNAME-cloaked HTTP response will be set to expire in seven days.
Announced November 12, 2020.
What is the impact to me as a Target customer?
Target provides JavaScript libraries for you to deploy on your pages so that Target can deliver real-time personalization to your visitors. There are three Target JavaScript libraries at.js 1.x, at.js 2.x, the Adobe Experience Cloud Web SDK that place client-side Target cookies on your visitors’ browsers via the document.cookie
API. As a result, Target cookies are impacted by Apple’s ITP 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 and will expire after seven days (with ITP 2.1) and after one day (with ITP 2.2 and ITP 2.3).
Apple ITP 2.x impacts Target in the following areas:
Is my current implementation of Target impacted?
If you are using the Experience Cloud ID (ECID) library in addition to the Target JavaScript library, your implementation will be impacted in the ways listed in this article: Safari ITP 2.1 Impact on Adobe Experience Cloud and Experience Platform Customers.