https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/25/23697532/microsoft-edge-browser-url-leak-bing-privacy
“It’s probably a good idea to disable Edge’s follow creator feature until this privacy issue is fixed.”
Microsoft’s Edge browser appears to be sending URLs you visit to its Bing API website. Reddit users first spotted the privacy issues with Edge last week, noticing that the latest version of Microsoft Edge sends a request to bingapis.com with the full URL of nearly every page you navigate to. Microsoft tells The Verge it’s investigating the reports.
“Searching for references to this URL give very few results, no documentation on this feature at all,” said hackermchackface, the Reddit user who first discovered the issue. While Reddit users weren’t able to uncover why Microsoft Edge is sending the URLs you visit to its Bing API site, we asked Rafael Rivera, a software engineer and one of the developers behind EarTrumpet, to investigate, and he discovered it’s part of a poorly implemented new feature in Edge.
“Microsoft Edge now has a creator follow feature that is enabled by default,” says Rivera in a conversation with The Verge. “It appears the intent was to notify Bing when you’re on certain pages, such as YouTube, The Verge, and Reddit. But it doesn’t appear to be working correctly, instead sending nearly every domain you visit to Bing.”..
Until Microsoft completes its investigation and presumably patches this problem, we’d highly recommend turning off the “follow creators” feature in Microsoft Edge. Chances are you never knew it existed and will never use it, so it’s not a function you’re likely to miss. To do so, navigate to Settings, choose the Privacy, Search and Services tab, and scroll down to Services. Toggle off the switch beside Show suggestions to follow creators in Microsoft Edge, and you should be fine.
* Why should Edge notify Bing on any visited pages at all ?
