Is your iPhone listening to you — no, well not exactly. But that doesn’t stop millions assuming it is. What is happening is a new form of silent tracking that identifies your phone across all the websites you visit, without you ever knowing it’s happening.
This is called digital fingerprinting. Google has warned “this subverts user choice and is wrong.” That’s because “unlike cookies, users cannot clear their fingerprint, and therefore cannot control how their information is collected.”
But Google suddenly changed its mind.
Just as with its decision to unkill tracking cookies, Google has also brought back digital fingerprinting this year. And it’s not just browsers any more — all your smart devices can be part of this tracking ecosystem built around your life.
But browsers are at the heart of any tracking — because this is where you visit websites that neatly define your life, job, interests and habits. This is where you shop, work, play, research and hang out. None of us would choose to make our internet history public.
Digital fingerprinting collates an array of data from your phone — your IP address, device model and OS, time zone, setup and anything else if can get — to create a unique identifier in aggregate, even if each individual data snippet us useless on its own.
If you’re interacting with Google on your iPhone you’re leaving a fingerprint, even if you use Safari and avoid Google’s own Chrome browser on privacy grounds. But Apple is fighting back with iOS 26 to stop this working as Google might like. And you can enable this now — and reclaim some of the privacy lost to this invasive new tracking.
In the Safari settings on your iPhone, under “Advanced,” you will see an option called “Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection.” By default this is currently toggled to “Private Browsing,” but will default to “All Browsing” in iOS 26.
This setting essentially confuses digital fingerprinting by pushing out a raft of useless data or chaff to mask what’s real, making it difficult — albeit not impossible — for trackers to isolate your device from hundreds of millions of others.
This is important because while Safari blocks tracking cookies, which offer opt-outs, digital fingerprinting is pervasive and silent and you can’t opt out. As one regulator warns, this means it’s “not a fair means of tracking” and is likely “to reduce people’s choice and control over how their information is collected.”
In theory, toggling this on for all browsing might create some oddities as you use the web, but I haven’t seen any. Go ahead and make that change now. This is just for Safari, so remember fingerprinting is being used across other apps, platforms and devices, and that now means smart TVs and game consoles as well as phones and computers.
Something to keep in mind as you live your normal life.
