Web browsers phoning home on launch

On macOS, the most popular web browsers, and the ones I use most frequently, are Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. My tool of choice to test these browsers is Little Snitch. The quietest of the three web browsers appears to be Safari. It’s important to note, however, that Chrome and Firefox are self-contained, whereas Safari is part of macOS and can delegate some of its functionality such as iCloud sync to other macOS processes, many of which phone home to Apple. I personally don’t use sync or sign-in with any web browser, so I have no desire for any of them to phone home. Safari connects on launch to the domain wps.apple.com for the Web Privacy Service, ironically named considering that it’s violating my privacy. The connection uses certificate pinning, so unfortunately I couldn’t intercept it with Proxyman, another favorite tool. However, the connection is likely related to link tracking protection, introduced in Safari version 17. For more details, see my blog post from 2023 and my…