Browser Specifics

Although Monetate focuses on the "big four" browsers— Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge—it constantly monitors the relative popularity of other browsers to proactively solve potential issues.

Apple Safari

Safari is the most common browser to access Monetate client sites, largely due to ever-increasing mobile traffic and the fact that Safari is the default browser on Apple devices.

Apple Safari's Intelligent Tracking Protection (ITP) is an evolving set of features and rules to control how cookies can track user behavior. ITP1.x focused primarily on third-party cookies, but ITP2.x has introduced additional settings that cap the lifespan of client-side cookies to 7 days as well as resolve loopholes some vendors used to circumvent the spirit of the rule.

For the purposes of ITP, client-side cookies are cookies set via document.cookie, the traditional way of setting cookies using JavaScript. Cookies set via HTTP, or server-side, are not affected. This can directly impact Monetate functionality because the Monetate ID (the mt.v cookie) is intended to last much longer than 7 days to properly track new and returning status and collect cross-session behavioral data. Here are some specific examples:

  • New and returning visitors — Returning customers who may have last visited the site 7+ days ago are considered new visitors because the historical sessions are lost
  • Behavioral targeting — Data about a visitor's past behavior related to WHO targeting, such as products viewed and past purchases, is limited to the previous 7 day unless the visitor has returned to the site and extended the lifespan of the cookie
  • Testing analytics — Customers who may have last visited the site 7+ days ago can qualify for a separate testing split because their previous variant assignment has been lost

Recent updates to Safari ITP blocks third-party cookies on your site. This update means that Preview Mode and the Monetate Inspector browser plug-in may not work in Safari.

Monetate has developed an alternative approach to delivering Preview Mode to the site. To have this option enabled for your account, submit a support ticket using the Monetate Technical Support portal (support.monetate.com).

No workaround is available at this time for Monetate Inspector. Monetate recommends using a different browser such as Chrome if you need to use the browser plug-in.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome serves as the default browser for many Android phones and is one of the more popular for desktops and laptops.

Starting with Chrome v80, all cookies are considered same-site (lax) by default unless a same-site value of None is explicitly set. Additionally, non-secure third-party cookies are no longer allowed.

Changes in the Monetate platform account for this issue to avoid any issues with Preview or the Builders by ensuring that the SameSite attribute is set in the session cookie and explicitly requiring that all cross-site functionality be secure (HTTPS).

Built on the Chromium source code, the browser's approach to increased Web security has been dubbed Privacy Sandbox." This functionality involves a suite of features intended to allow most common legitimate use cases (such as cross-site login) to continue to function, albeit implemented in a different way. Chromium developers have indicated their intent to consider the standards of the W3C Community and Business Groups Web Standards Committee and feedback to those standards. Monetate continues to monitor these sandbox features and make platform updates when and where necessary.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla has publicly indicated its commitment to robust browser privacy features while maintaining good site functionality. Firefox's tracking protection suite, known as Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP), is designed to be both robust in its ability to protect end-user privacy and minimally impact website functionality. This trade-off has been accomplished and refined through a variety of means, including allowing end users to block all third-party cookies or just block trackers and to handle private browsing mode as a special case.

More recent versions of Firefox streamline privacy considerations. The browser's preferences settings allow a user to select standard, strict, or custom privacy settings, with the custom option allowing the user to block or unblock potential trackers by category (for example, third-party ads, fingerprinters, or cryptominers). Additionally, users can set exemptions, essentially serving as a whitelist. Even the standard privacy setting aggressively blocks trackers.

Firefox relies on Disconnect, Inc. (disconnect.me) for its list of trackers, and Monetate is on this list. While standard mode doesn't appear to limit Monetate functionality, the ease with which users can modify their privacy settings means that Monetate can be blocked, either partially or in full depending on various settings. Using Firefox in private mode have Monetate blocked by default.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft's latest browser uses a combination of Disconnect and user-site engagement scores to determine how to and what to block, from cookies to resources. This combination provides a reasonable compromise of privacy and usability. Whether Monetate is blocked by default depends on Edge's user-engagement score for that site, so it's difficult to know whether Monetate is blocked for all users on a given site.

With Microsoft Edge 79 and onward, tracker blocking is robust. In addition to preexisting features such as care taken to ensure that domain ownership is taken into account (that is, Edge understands that one company might own two domains and is less strict in cross-site blocking in such a case), trackers are more stringently blocked, and increasingly large number of types of trackers are blocked.

Other Browsers

Not everyone uses one of the four main browser options, so here's a look at how privacy and security measures in certain other browsers impact Monetate.

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer — Internet Explorer 11 is a legacy browser that still has some use. It's generally strict with third-party cookies and blocks many of them by default based on internal, unknown-to-the-public blacklists. However, first-party cookies are generally allowed.
  • Opera — This multi-platform browser doesn't block third-party cookies or trackers by default, although users can change this setting in the preferences.
  • Brave — This up-and-coming browser prioritizes privacy. It blocks Monetate by default.