Quickly… how rampant are trackers on the websites you visit? Do you know? Are you interested to know? If you use Safari Browser on MacOS, you have everything you need to see that information built right into the browser. The tool in question is called Privacy Report and is very easy to access and use. With Privacy Report, you can view reported domains as well as the websites that have tracked you from those domains.
The information Safari collects will be an interesting one for many users, who probably don’t know how common trackers are. With that information in hand, you can be inclined to stop visiting a website or ensure that it is not trackable.
The good news is that Safari is pretty good at blocking trackers. But having this information at your disposal can help you make an informed decision about how to approach your online behavior.
Also: How to Get More Space in Safari with Compact Layout
There are two ways to view this information – on a site-by-page basis or from a comprehensive dashboard. I’ll show you how to do both. What information you end up with is entirely up to you. In a few cases, I stopped viewing sites that used large amounts of trackers (whether they were blocked or not).
With that said, how do you find the Safari Privacy Report? Let’s dig deep and find out. I will demonstrate on Safari 15.6.1 running on MacBook Pro with MacOS Monterey.
How to view each site’s Privacy Report
1. Open a website
Open Safari and navigate to a site you frequent.
2. Open the Privacy Report
Click directly on the shield icon to the left of the Safari address bar (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The shield icon is how you access the Privacy Report in Safari.
Image: Jack Wallen
Click “Trackers on this site” (Figure 2).
Figure 2: I’m about to look at the number of trackers that Safari is blocked on Facebook. Image: Jack Wallen
When you expand the entry, you’ll see a list of trackers that Safari is blocked from. Honestly, I was surprised at how much Safari caught. And after a quick refresh, Safari doesn’t find any new trackers, leading me to believe the web browser is doing its job.
Next, we will review the Privacy Report for all websites.
How to view the Global Privacy Report
1. Open the Privacy Report popup
As you did to open the report on each site, click the shield icon. This time, however, click the circled “i” in the upper-left corner of the pop-up to bring up the Global Privacy Report (Figure 3).
Figure 3: The Global Security Report shows all the tracker information you need. Image: Jack Wallen
If you expand any item in the Websites tab, you’ll see a list of all the trackers that Safari is blocked (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Safari blocked 44 trackers on wdrb.com. Image: Jack Wallen
The Trackers tab retains more insight into the trackers Safari has blocked (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Safari blocked a significant number of trackers. Image: Jack Wallen
What can you do with this information?
The Safari Privacy Report is a tool that gives you information; it is not a way to take action. The reason is that the web browser took action by blocking the trackers. What you are seeing is the fruit of Safari’s labor.
However, as I said earlier, you can use that information to make informed decisions about the websites you visit. While Safari may block trackers, that doesn’t mean the tracker will stop trying to do its job.
For example, Safari blocked branch.io and google-analytics.com from following me on Twitter, but they kept trying (and failed… thanks to Safari). But now that I know Twitter is trying to get those trackers on me, if that worries me, I can choose to stop visiting the site or use a web browser for Twitter to be even more active in blocking trackers (such as Firefox with the Customize option for Advanced Trackers Protection).
Trusted sites can be a dangerous proposition these days. You should keep yourself informed of what is happening to the websites you visit, so that you and your privacy can be better protected.
