Inline frames are useful if you want to embed elements from external sources into your own site. Instead of sending the user to another domain, they can continue to surf the website. As a result, user-friendliness increases considerably. In addition, the integration has some technical advantages. The iframe’s content is loaded independently from the rest of the website’s content. In this way, the content is available to the user, even when other page elements haven’t been loaded.
In reality, inline frames are becoming increasingly less important because there are drawbacks to the method. For example, it doesn’t handle embedded elements from search engines appropriately. This can affect search engine optimization and therefore the ranking of a website. The security risk associated with iframes is of greater concern. If you embed external content, it may harm your system. The content in an iframe could, for example, contain a harmful plug-in or the website owner could fall victim to a phishing attack without realizing it.
As data protection becomes a growing concern among website owners and users, iframes are hotly debated. Inline frames are often used in social media plug-ins which collect user data, even if the website visitor doesn’t interact with a ‘like’ or ‘share’ button or is a registered user.