Online Gambling Affiliates Due to Lose a Quarter or More of Their Tracking Ability

The news keeps getting worse for online gambling affiliates.  Faced with a compliance adherence stranglehold this year thanks to a European Union crackdown, now these affiliates will have to contend with losing over a quarter of their referral traffic (that's if they are lucky).

Currently Apple and its Safari browser permit cookies up to 24 hours, meaning that any action a gambler takes beyond that period such as depositing $10,000 at an online casino and losing it, referring affiliates will not receive credit.

It only gets worse!

Some time in October, Apple is expected to release its updated browser where users will have to "opt-in" to allow websites to track their browsing behavior on Safari.  Currently, users have the ability to block cookies altogether, but this is a measure they have to do themselves, and few do.

Apple will also limit "fingerprinting," or the ability companies to follow specific device activity.

Safari makes up nearly a quarter of the overall browser market.

It's not just Web affiliates that will be hurt by the new move, Google and Facebook are also likely to suffer.

One ad agency exe told CNBC Apple's new limits on tracking put Facebook and Google in a "precarious place" as neither company will be allowed to follow users across the web as well as attribute how many individual users were clicking on links or what kinds of people were looking at ads.