Apple Safari class action claims company tracks users through fingerprinting

California resident Sarah Simpson filed a class action lawsuit against Apple on June 24, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, alleging the company misleadingly advertises that it prevents tracking yet engages in fingerprinting.

The class action lawsuit's claims

Simpson, who reportedly bought two new iPhones from Apple in 2025, says Apple markets itself around privacy, using the slogan "Privacy. That's Apple," and advertising Safari with a set of anti-tracking features.

However, the class action lawsuit alleges Apple uses a tracking method called canvas fingerprinting. Instead of relying on cookies, which users can delete, fingerprinting reportedly works from small details a browser routinely shares with websites, such as device type, operating system, screen resolution, language and time zone.

Canvas fingerprinting is a more precise version of fingerprinting. It works by asking the browser to invisibly draw a hidden image that each device renders a little differently, producing a signature that identifies the user. The lawsuit alleges Safari's default mode offers no protection against canvas fingerprinting.

The suit also claims Safari's privacy report, the feature meant to list blocked trackers, fails to flag well-known fingerprinting scripts, such as one from Adobe, even while those scripts run live on the page.

Additionally, the complaint alleges even when the privacy report tells a user it blocked a tracker, the Adobe script still loads, gathers device details through a graphics feature called WebGL, transmits identifiers to outside servers and sets tracking cookies.

Why tracking is valuable

The class action cites 2025 research showing fingerprinting scripts run on more than a third of the top 500 U.S. websites and that browser data can reveal a person's gender, age, income and race. It alleges the practice falls hardest on Hispanic, non-white, lower-income and older users, whom the research found trackers can more easily fingerprint.

The data also has commercial value. The suit cites research that fingerprinting drives up what advertisers bid in real-time ad auctions and notes Google pays Apple 36% of the ad revenue it earns through Safari. The lawsuit claims that the more precisely advertisers can target, the more Apple collects, giving the company a financial reason to allow the tracking it publicly opposes.

The legal claims

The complaint brings six claims against Apple:

• Breach of express contract, which alleges when a customer buys an Apple device, it creates a promise it will work as advertised
• Breach of implied contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, related claims that assert Apple denied buyers the deal they expected
• California Unfair Competition Law, which bars unlawful, unfair and deceptive business practices
• California False Advertising Law, which bars untrue or misleading advertising
• California Consumers Legal Remedies Act, which lets consumers sue over deceptive sales practices

What the case means for Apple users

Simpson asked the court to certify the class, award damages, force Apple to give up profits and order it to run a corrective advertising campaign and change how it describes Safari. The proposed class action seeks to represent every U.S. consumer who purchased an Apple device with the Safari browser preinstalled.

For now, there is no settlement, no claims process and no money to collect. Apple has not publicly responded, and no court has certified a class. The allegations remain unproven.