Cross-site tracking is the practice of monitoring a person's browsing behavior. Often, it involves sharing data with third parties such as advertisers. If you've ever looked at a product on Amazon, and then seen ads for it follow you from website to website, you've been a victim of cross-site tracking.

As CNET notes, Apple isn't the first tech company to announce a crackdown on cross-site tracking. In fact, in the document itself, Apple notes its new policy was inspired by Mozilla's anti-tracking policy. However, the scale of the company and its cachet with both consumers and within the industry may turn the tide against the practice.

That said, as significant as Apple's new stance against cross-site tracking is, it's not even the most important privacy stance Apple has taken this year. At WWDC 2019 in June, the company announced "Sign in with Apple," a new, privacy-focused login service designed to compete against similar offerings from Google and Facebook. One of the notable features of the service is that it will generate random emails to protect an individual's primary email. Experts, however, aren't in agreement whether the feature is a clear win for consumers.