Google says Safari's 'anti-tracking' feature actually allowed tracking

The vulnerabilities in question, Google's engineers explained, were found in Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), a tool Apple built into Safari three years ago to protect the privacy of its users.

At its core, the feature worked by logging third-party tracking cookies and blocking the websites utilizing them. These sites were then logged as 'prevalent domains' and added into a dedicated 'ITP list'.

While ITP worked without any hiccups, the list it maintained created the security issue.

Essentially, Google said, the list could have allowed a potential hacker to view the browsing and search history of a user.

Beyond that, it could have even allowed websites to track the users by checking the domain names added onto the browser list and manipulating it.

Apple, on its part, claimed that the vulnerabilities detailed in the study were fixed in December itself.

"We'd like to thank Google for sending us a report in which they explore both the ability to detect when web content is treated differently by tracking prevention and the bad things that are possible with such detection," Apple engineer John Wilander had said last month.

Despite Apple's response, the Google study detailing the bugs notes that the fixes released by the Cupertino giant have their limits.

The company didn't specifically say what these limitations were, but we hope Apple would be looking into the matter.

Last year, Google had also disclosed critical flaws in the iOS that were used to target Uighur Muslims in China.