Apple has announced IOS 17, and it's causing some marketing world drama. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/apple-announces-powerful-new-privacy-and-security-features/
In particular, this paragraph has thrown us digital marketers into an uproar:
Link Tracking Protection in Messages, Mail, and Safari Private Browsing
Some websites add extra information to their URLs in order to track users across other websites. Now this information will be removed from the links users share in Messages and Mail, and the links will still work as expected. This information will also be removed from links in Safari Private Browsing.
This means users can select a setting that will strip all UTMs, variables, and click IDs from Facebook, Google, TikTok, Microsoft, et al.
With Google Analytics 4 being pushed onto everyone, it's divine timing that Apple drops a bomb on GA4's potential data accuracy.
On the surface, you hear it's for private browsing mode, and relax - that's similar to incognito mode in Chrome, which people generally only use to snoop around or visit certain late night sites...right?
But then I was shared this video from Travis Ketchum, and this might be a bigger deal than I thought. The video goes right to the time stamp that has the Link Tracking Protection settings - and it sure seems easy to turn this on for ALL browsing.
As of mid-2025, the initial industry worry about Link Tracking Protection being widely adopted for all browsing by default has somewhat stabilized. While LTP remains a significant challenge, particularly for the stripping of platform click IDs (fbclid, gclid, etc.) in Safari Private Browsing, Mail, and Messages, most users have not opted to enable the "All Browsing" setting. However, the sheer volume of traffic using Mail and Messages means the impact on cross-site attribution remains high. Crucially, the latest tests still confirm that standard UTM parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, etc.) are generally not stripped, making them a vital component for first-touch and last-touch attribution gaps when combined with a sophisticated platform like Wicked Reports.
