How to resolve the too many redirects error on Safari

Apple recently added a feature to Safari that helps prevent ads, tracking, and other “3rd party” cookies. This feature, called Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), uses machine learning and profiling to categorize sites and cookies based on the habit of both how the user and the website interact with each other.

This feature, unfortunately, can cause interruptions when a site uses an authentication service such as Google, which can lead to an error known as “Too many redirects”. This error occurs as Safari’s new ITP is blocking authentication checks between Google and services such as Securly. We were able to reproduce this issue on sites such as Google Drive and other sites using Google Single Sign-On authentication.

 

The following is the Official response from Google about ITP

"It is a known Safari issue that can cause interruptions when a site uses an authentication service such as Google, which can lead to an error known as "Too many redirects". For more information, please follow this official Apple Support article: https://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT203370."

How can we resolve this problem:

At this time, due to limitations caused by this new feature, the only way to assure that you will not be affected by the “Too Many Redirects” error is to turn off a feature inside Safari known as Prevent cross-site tracking.

It has also come to our attention that Apple’s latest developer release of Safari has disabled this feature upon installation. Or you can use other browsers such as Chrome and Firefox which have not yet reported this problem.  

Enabling cross-site tracking 

macOS:

• Open Safari
• Click on “Safari” at the top left of your screen
• Click on “Preferences…”
• Click on the “Privacy” tab
• Uncheck “Prevent cross-site tracking”

iOS:

• Open the Settings app
• Scroll down to Safari and tap on it
• Scroll down to “Prevent Cross-Site Tracking”
• Toggle it off so that it is white

Note that at this time, the iOS management API does not have the ability to change this setting. This setting must be done manually on each iPad.

Clearing the Safari cache will provide a temporary fix. After 24 hours the problem will most likely appear again.