Data Strategy Briefing — March 24, 2020
Apple's WebKit team enabled full third-party cookie blocking in Safari 13.1, accelerating deprecation of cross-site tracking and requiring teams to audit analytics, advertising, and legacy authentication flows for new storage limits.
Executive briefing: On , Apple announced that WebKit's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) now blocks all third-party cookies by default in Safari 13.1 on macOS and iOS. The change lands alongside tightened storage limits for script-writable storage and requires updates to cross-site authentication, analytics, and advertising implementations.
Why it matters: Third-party cookie blocking can disrupt single sign-on flows that rely on embedded identity providers, legacy marketing pixels, and cross-domain session hand-offs. Data teams must ensure consent and tracking mechanisms respect the new restrictions while maintaining measurement fidelity.
- Audit dependencies: Inventory third-party cookies used for analytics, advertising, and SSO; replace brittle dependencies with first-party storage or server-side integrations.
- Update auth flows: Validate OpenID Connect and SAML flows when initiated from iframes or embedded browsers and enable same-site compatible redirects.
- Measure impact: Adjust web analytics attribution models and configure CNAME-based first-party data collection where compliant with local privacy laws.
- Communicate changes: Inform marketing and product teams about ITP behavior and update consent banners to reflect cookie storage limitations.
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