Apple says Safari protects your privacy. We checked those claims.

But Albert Fox Cahn, director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said Safari is no better than the fourth-best web browser for your privacy.

“If browser privacy were an Olympic sport, Apple wouldn’t be on the podium,” Cahn said. (Apple declined to comment.)

The bottom line if you use Safari: You should feel pretty good about its privacy (and security) protections, but you can probably do better — either by adjusting your Apple settings or using a web browser that’s even more private than Safari. I’ll dive into the details.

These small software files are used by many websites and are standard in the most popular web browser, Google Chrome, to track where you are online.

Cookie tracking on the web is likely the reason you see online ads for shoes after searching for running shoes once.

Cookies can be useful or harmless on their own. But in large quantities, cookies help companies build digital dossiers on your income, location, interests in mental illness, love of horror movies, and other things you might not want insurance companies or supermarkets digging up.

Safari stops third-party cookies wherever you go on the web. That includes Mozilla’s Firefox and the Brave browser. You can use either on a Windows PC, Mac, iPhone, or Android device. Safari is only available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Chrome will allow third-party cookies in most cases unless you turn them off. Learn how to do this for Chrome and the Microsoft Edge browser. (This may not be possible if you use a Google or Microsoft account managed by your employer.)

Even without cookies, a website can still collect information such as the resolution of your computer screen, the fonts you have installed, additional software you use, and other technical data. This data can help identify your device and what you do on it.

The measures, commonly called “fingerprinting,” are privacy-undermining tracking by another name. Nick Doty of the Center for Democracy & Technology said that, in general, there’s not much you can do about fingerprinting. Most of the time, you don’t know you’re being tracked that way.

Apple says it protects against common fingerprinting techniques, but Cahn said Firefox, Brave and the Tor Browser are all better at protecting against digital surveillance. As a result, he said Safari is no better than the fourth-best browser for privacy.

It’s great that big companies like Apple and Meta and smaller organizations are competing to convince you with privacy features.

Adding privacy protections also has drawbacks, such as disabling parts of websites that you need. Smaller browsers may have the freedom to be more aggressive on privacy than Apple, which risks angering website owners, advertisers, regulators, and some users when it tightens privacy protections.

Using the handy “Cover Your Tracks” privacy test from the consumer privacy nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, I found that using the Safari browser on my iPhone provided partial protection from common forms of data tracking.

I got a similar result with the Firefox browser on an Android phone. A PC with the Chrome browser failed the EFF tracking protection test.

This is a moment to remind you of the limitations of the ‘private’ or ‘incognito’ mode in web browsers.

When you use this mode in Safari, the web browser on your device won’t keep track of the websites you’ve viewed or searches you’ve performed.

This can be useful if you use a shared computer at a public library or if you use your family’s computer to buy a surprise gift or visit adult sites.

But as with most other browsers, the websites you use and your home internet provider or workplace can still know which sites you’ve visited. If you’re using a virtual private network — software that masks your location — the VPN owner has likely recorded where you go, even in private mode.

Mozilla has a handy document that debunks myths about Firefox’s private browsing mode. It may also apply to other browsers.

When you use this option, Apple says it does more to block the use of “advanced” fingerprinting techniques. It also strengthens defenses against tracking, which adds bits of identifying information to the web links you click. Whatever you do on the web, it’s locked down so that no one but you can see it.

You can turn on private browsing for everything you do in Safari, but there may be some drawbacks. Apple says that if you always use private browsing, some parts of websites may not work properly.

If you choose this option: On an iPhone, go to the Settings app → Safari → Advanced → Advanced Tracking & Fingerprinting Protection → change to ‘All Browsing’.