Introduction

As the digital landscape evolves, so do the measures to enhance user privacy. Web browsers have increasingly implemented stricter privacy protections, notably through mechanisms like Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), which significantly impact how cookies are managed and utilized. This guide outlines how our SDK helps navigate these changes, ensuring effective user tracking and data management without compromising user privacy.

What is ITP?

Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) is a privacy feature first introduced by Apple in its Safari browser in 2017. It's designed to limit how advertisers and websites can track users across different sites primarily through the use of cookies. By restricting third-party cookies and sometimes purging first-party cookies, ITP can disrupt standard tracking and personalization strategies crucial for modern web applications.

You can read more about the initial release and updates to ITP directly from Apple’s WebKit blog:

The Impact of ITP

The primary goal of ITP is to enhance user privacy by automatically removing cookies that are deemed to be used for tracking. This affects:

These restrictions pose significant challenges for businesses and developers who rely on cookies for legitimate purposes such as:

Server-side cookies

RudderStack JavaScript SDK traditionally relies on client-side cookies to persist essential data about users, their group affiliations, and page referrer information. With ITP limiting cookie lifespans to as short as 7 days, poses a substantial challenge for tracking returning users, session management, and maintaining personalized user experiences over time.

To address these restrictions effectively, we’ve introduced the ability to shift to a server-side cookie management strategy. By setting cookies on the server side, we ensure they are treated as first-party cookies, with full control over their attributes, including their expiration time. This approach circumvents the limitations imposed by ITP in several key ways:

  1. Extended Lifespan: Server-side cookies can be set with a longer lifespan, as they are not subject to the same stringent restrictions as client-managed cookies.