Tracking protection in Edge: Going to bat for privacy

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BROWSERS By Mary Branscombe Microsoft Edge builds in protection from tracking pixels and scripts that follow you around, and without breaking the webs
[See the full post at: Tracking protection in Edge: Going to bat for privacy]

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Norio, Lars220, rc primak, fisher75, lmacri

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I use Firefox with uBlock Origin. Is Privacy Badger a useful addition for protection against fingerprinting or will it fight/interfere with uBO?

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Lars220

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I run Ublock, Privacy Badger and Disconnect extensions and they work well together. Privacy Badger will block some things, but places a flag about it in the same place it would appear and offers a couple of options.  I find this helpful.

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DaveBoston, Lars220

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I use both uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger together in Edge; they don’t fight, but I do find more sites that need functionality turning back on with Privacy Badger – but it’s worth it for me, to be sending rather less data willynilly.

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re: edge blocking tracking in web pages,  I have to wonder if MS isn’t tracking your behavior,  just blocking others,  which may allow it to sell the info.  Not to sound cynical about MS

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Lars220, samak

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to quote Scott Hanselman of Microsoft: Microsoft isn’t nearly organised enough to be as evil as you think it is…

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b

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Firefox is my Default Browser, and instead of using Edge, I use the Brave browser that is Chromium based with some extra privacy shields. Both use Disconnect, Privacy Badger, and uBlock Origin without any complications that I notice.

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Cybertooth

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Where can I download the Portable version of edge? Edge NO! Chrome NO! Portable chrome sometimes. Portable Firefox most of the time, using duck-duck-go search. Still waiting for Duck-Duck-Go to make a portable version.

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CraigSH wrote:

Where can I download the Portable version of edge?

Microsoft tied Edge into Windows in such a way that it won’t run unless it’s actually installed into the OS.

So, as of right now, there’s no legitimate portable version of Edge available!

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Edge is in the iOS and Play stores, if you want a mobile version to sync favourites, passwords and so on (although the iOS version is obviously Safari underneath because Apple doesn’t allow multiple browser engines).

 

If you want a ‘portable’ version that you can use without installing (which you will have to update manually every time there’s a new release of Edge to stay secure), you could try this tool: https://github.com/UndertakerBen/PorEdgeUpd/releases

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I’ve found that I really like Edge as an alternate browser.  My daily driver is actually Seamonkey (and I also make quite a bit of use of Firefox, as well), although I have those with a lot of tweaks (especially uBlock Origin and NoScript and others), and sites don’t always work, including the ones that are developed by Chrome-only developers.  If a site isn’t working in a way that I can easily tweak with personal preferences, I generally switch over to Edge.  I also tend to use Edge on sites hosted within Microsoft’s infrastructure.  Not only Office365.com as a user, but also admin tools for things hosted at Microsoft.

The caveat is that before using Edge, I believe it’s necessary to go through the Settings and review *everything*.  There is a lot that Microsoft enables by default that doesn’t need to be active.  Fortunately, they make all those settings available, even if the process of reviewing and adjusting is kind of tedious.  But in my mind, that’s preferable to Google’s “trust us” of over-simplifying everything, and where there Google prevents adjusting a lot of things, because they have commercial interest in preventing users from making those changes.

In this context, it is useful to read Brian Livingstone’s article in this week’s newsletter that details where Microsoft’s revenue comes from — the largest sources are Cloud Services, and Microsoft 365. Windows is a distant third.  Thus, they don’t have significant need for exploiting user data for delivering advertising in the way that Google does.

As for Edge, even if you don’t normally use it (at least not intentionally), it’s still worth going through and reviewing all the settings, to turn off things that aren’t needed.  There are too many things in Windows, especially Win 11 where Microsoft forces interaction through Edge, even if another browser is defined as the system default. To that end, if I’m working on a client’s computer, I normally will review all the settings in Edge, especially when I know that the user doesn’t use Edge.

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Mary Branscombe, n0ads, lmacri, Lars220, TechTango, NaNoNyMouse

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Still Anonymous wrote:

As for Edge, even if you don’t normally use it (at least not intentionally), it’s still worth going through and reviewing all the settings, to turn off things that aren’t needed.

Yes, excellent advice, and one easy way to control Edge is with the free O&O ShutUp10++ program, along with a lot of other Windows items that can be controlled also. But definitely take the time needed to thoroughly go through all the Edge Settings just so you know what is involved with using the Microsoft Edge browser, and we should spend the time necessary to check all our other browsers settings also.

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Still Anonymous, lmacri, Cybertooth

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O&O ShutUp10 is a good tool, but there are a lot of things in Edge that it won’t touch, and even after ShutUp10, I recommend checking all of Edge’s settings to do things like turning off links to Microsoft Wallet, leaving Edge running in the background after Windows starts, clearing cookies, cache and browsing history on exit, and more.  As noted, I think this is particularly important for users that don’t intentionally use Edge, to make sure that Edge isn’t doing stuff you don’t want — both when you’re forced to use Edge by Windows, as well as stuff running in the background.

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n0ads

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I looked at O&O when I installed win10, years ago, but went with win10 Privacy instead. I believe it was because Win10 priv had many more settings.  But that was years ago.  I still use Win10 Priv.

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Mary Branscombe wrote:

Edge is in the iOS and Play stores, if you want a mobile version to sync favourites, passwords and so on (although the iOS version is obviously Safari underneath because Apple doesn’t allow multiple browser engines).

 

If you want a ‘portable’ version that you can use without installing (which you will have to update manually every time there’s a new release of Edge to stay secure), you could try this tool: https://github.com/UndertakerBen/PorEdgeUpd/releases

on my iphone, i use duckduckgo as browser.  haven’t opened safari in ages.  isn’t ddg a different browser engine than safari?

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One gotcha to be aware of with Edge — as with Windows, Microsoft has the annoying habit of occasionally resetting user-defined preferences back to their preferred defaults.

I just saw that happen to Edge on my primary working machine (although not others) about a week ago, when Edge got an update.  I don’t remember if the update was one that happened automatically via Windows processes, or I got the update through WinGet, although I know I didn’t do this particular one via Help -> About.  I’ve seen resets happen before — I don’t think any have completely reset all preferences, and what gets reset tends to vary from time to time.

As for O&O ShutUp10, it’s also one that needs periodic reviews, as Windows updates may occasionally reset something to Microsoft’s preferences.

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Cybertooth

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I would definitely report that one as a bug as it’s not the expected behaviour; it would certainly infuriate me!

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A good idea, although in this case, not doable.  I only saw that on one machine (not all that I maintain), but it’s not the first time I’ve seen personally selected preferences changed, at least some of them.

Beyond that I’m not aware of how to do a report, this particular episode is far enough in the past, and that I don’t have enough detail of what happened and when to be able to file a credible report.  But something for the future.

In the meantime, I’m already used to Windows sometimes overruling my chosen preferences, including even resetting default applications to Microsoft’s defaults that I’m conditioned to accept that as just “Microsoft has decided that their preferences are better than mine”.  I hadn’t really considered the possibility that the maintainers of Edge (or for that matter, Microsoft 365) may not be as aggressive on doing that as what happens with Windows itself.

In any case, I fully agree with you that whether Edge, Windows, Microsoft 365 or any other Microsoft product, user-chosen preferences should be sacrosanct, and never touched by an automated process without a clear request for permission to do so.  And with permissions requests there should be an option not only for declining a Microsoft-suggested change back to their preferred defaults (e.g, Edge suggesting that it should be the default browser), but also an option offered of  “don’t ask again”).  With Edge, it happens too often that for occasional use, the prompt for resetting the browser default back to Edge is persistent enough that it’s too easy to accept the prompt — even Edge is useful to use occasionally, I don’t want it as my default — not now, not ever, and I really want Microsoft to honor my choice and not continue to prompt.

As for stuff that does get reset, I don’t know if it’s sloppy coding, or something that is being pushed by Microsoft (especially Marketing trying to convince you to do stuff <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>their</span> way), or that there’s nobody truly in charge with enough care and authority to address these questions.  Frankly, I suspect a combination of all three.

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In Edge, click the three dots menu on the far right of the toolbar and choose Help and Feedback | Send Feedback. You can include diagnostic data, add a screenshot if it’s a problem with a specific web site or just type in what’s not working. Sadly there’s not a public database to see if an issue you have is a common problem.

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