Windows 10: Tracking prevention now available in Microsoft Edge preview builds

Brink · Jun 27, 2019

Today, we’re releasing an experimental preview of tracking prevention for Microsoft Edge. We initially demoed this feature at Build 2019 as one of the concepts we’re exploring to offer greater transparency and control over your online data. Microsoft Edge Insiders can now try out tracking prevention by enabling the experimental flag on Microsoft Edge preview builds starting with version 77.0.203.0 (today’s Canary channel release). (Note: Today’s Canary release is not currently available for macOS due to a build issue.

Tracking prevention will be available in the next update to the Canary channel on macOS.)Tracking prevention is designed to protect you from being tracked by websites that you aren’t accessing directly. Whenever a website is visited, trackers from other sites may save information in the browser using cookies and other storage mechanisms. This information may include the sites you’ve visited and the content you’re interested in, building a digital profile which can be accessed by organizations to offer personalized content when visiting other sites.

The implementation in Microsoft Edge Insider preview builds is early and is likely to change as we hear from our customers and continue to test the feature. For that reason, it’s currently behind an experimental flag and disabled by default. There may be some bugs or site issues, but we want to get it into your hands to hear what you think.

Turning on tracking prevention

To try out tracking prevention, you’ll need to be on a Microsoft Edge Insider preview build (version 77.0.203.0 or higher – or at least today’s Canary channel release). Once you’re on the right build, you’ll need to manually enable the experiment.

In the address bar, enter edge://flags#edge-tracking-prevention to open the experimental settings page. Click the dropdown and choose Enabled, then click the Relaunch Now button to close all Microsoft Edge windows and relaunch Microsoft Edge.

Tracking prevention can be enabled via edge://flags

That’s it! Once the tracking prevention experiment is enabled, you can go to the Microsoft Edge privacy settings page to control settings for tracking prevention. In the address bar, enter edge://settings/privacy and adjust the settings as desired:

The default tracking prevention setting is Balanced, which blocks 3rd party trackers and known malicious trackers for an experience that balances privacy and web compatibility. You can customize tracking prevention to your preferences by setting it to Strict, which blocks the majority of 3rd party trackers, or Basic, which only blocks malicious trackers.

How it works

When blocking a tracker, we aim to stop it from accessing previously stored tracking information and storing new tracking information. When tracking resources don’t add meaningful functionality to the page, we may even block them entirely. In order to do this, tracking prevention is made up of three main components.

Classification: How we determine what is considered a tracking URL.

Enforcement: The actions we take to protect our users from trackers.

Mitigations: The mechanisms we use to make sure your favorite sites still work, while offering strong default protection.

Classification

We’ve added a new component to Microsoft Edge, Trust Protection Lists, that contains the latest information on which organizations may be trying to track users on the web. This component allows us to be flexible with where we source details on what a tracker is and when we deliver updated lists to our users.

To check if the URL is considered a tracker by our classification system, we check a series of hostnames, starting with an exact match and then proceeding to check for partial matches for up to 4 labels beyond the top-level domain.
Example:

URL: https://a.subdomain.of.a.known.tracker.test/some/path

Tested hostnames:

subdomain.of.a.known.tracker.test

a.known.tracker.test

known.tracker.test

tracker.test

test

If any of those hostnames represents a known tracker, we proceed with evaluating enforcement actions intended to prevent the user from being tracked.
Enforcement

To provide protection for our users from tracking actions on the web, we take two enforcement actions against trackers:

Restrict storage access: If a known tracking resource tries to access any web storage where it may try to persist data about the user, we will block that access. This includes restricting the ability for that tracker to get or set cookies as well as access storage APIs such as IndexedDB and localStorage.

Block resource loads: If a known tracking resource is being loaded on a website, we may block that load before the request reaches the network depending on its compatibility impact and the tracking prevention setting you have set. Blocked loads may include tracking scripts, “pixels”, iframes, and more. This prevents any data potentially being sent to the tracking domain and may even improve load times and performance of the page as a side effect.

You can view the number of trackers blocked on a page by clicking the page info button next to the URL in the address bar at the top of the browser. Here you can change the tracking prevention setting on a site by site basis if you trust a site, or if something doesn’t seem to be working properly.

Mitigations

The web is a complex place and we realize there is no “one size fits all” solution to privacy. Depending on the mode of tracking prevention you enable, we will take different actions to balance our enforcement and put you in control of your personal experience on the web.

Tracker categorization

Every tracking resource is classified into a category that best represents the type of tracking activities it performs. Every tracking prevention mode uses a set of categories to represent what types of trackers will have storage access restricted or resource loads blocked.

Not all types of trackers are equal. Fingerprinting trackers are those trackers that attempt to identify you, or your browser based on its unique characteristics. Cryptomining scripts are scripts that attempt to abuse your processor and memory to generate cryptocurrencies, reducing your browser’s performance and battery life. Even when you’ve opted into our Basic mode you will be protected from these egregious types of tracking.

By default, in Balanced, all users will get a robust set of tracker categories that have storage access blocked, and a slightly smaller set that have resource loads blocked. We have taken care to ensure that these sets provide protection while ensuring compatibility as you browse the web and use your favorite applications. For example, Balanced will allow third party content to enable login flows using third party identities or social network commenting on third party sites.

Our Strict mode provides the largest set of categories to block storage access and resource loads. This is for users who don’t mind a little bit of site breakage in exchange for greater protection. This is also the default level of protection when you launch an InPrivate window.

Organizations

Not all organizations do business on the internet using just one domain name. In order to help keep sites working smoothly, we group domains owned and operated by the same organization together. For instance, we might have a grouping that says “Org1” owns the domains “org1.test” and “org1-cdn.test”. If the user visits https://org1.test/, and it tries to load a resource from https://org1-cdn.test/, we won’t take any enforcement actions against that auxiliary domain even though it’s not a first party URL. However, if another organization, Org2 (https://org2.test/), tries to load that same resource, it would be subject to restrictions because it is not part of the same organization.

We are currently experimenting with ways to provide even greater privacy protection by investigating opportunities to expand the types of trackers we block for you. For the Balanced setting, we may start to consider your recent interactions with sites. For example, for sites that you interact with in a first party context on a regular basis, access to cookies, localStorage, IndexedDB and other storage may be allowed in a broader context to ensure web functionality, like login flows or social network commenting, just works. For sites you don’t visit, we may more aggressively block that content in a third-party context. This will let us improve protection while the sites you care about continue to work across the web.

For our enterprise customers, we are experimenting with exposing policies to allow the right balance of control in order to ensure all their users are protected and existing line of business apps continue to work.

Debugging tools

In order to help web developers identify trackers on their websites that may be affected by this feature, we’ve added some DevTools console messages to show when enforcement actions are taken. These can be used to see exactly what was restricted and help identify which parts of a site may need to be better tailored towards protecting a user’s privacy.

Send us feedback

We want to hear from you about this feature. If you think something’s not working right or it’s blocking too much or too little, please send us feedback using the “smiley face” icon in the top right corner of the browser.

If you’re a web developer, try out the DevTools experience with tracking preventing enabled and let us know what you think. If you’re a web surfer, catch some waves and let us know how tracking prevention fits into your browsing habits.

We’ll use your feedback on this experimental feature in the Canary and Dev channels to understand potential impact to web compatibility and iterate on the experience to be helpful and easy to use.

As we gather feedback and continue to tune the feature, we will begin rolling out tracking prevention to a broader audience.

Thanks for being a part of this early preview!

– Brandon Maslen, Senior Software Engineer
– Ryan Cropp, Software Engineer
Click to expand...

Source: Introducing tracking prevention, now available in Microsoft Edge preview builds - Microsoft Edge Blog

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FrankieRaney · Jun 27, 2019

Edge tracking cookies

I have had the same problem. All these tracking cookies slow down my machine. Edge has gotten to be the best except for this problem.

I suggest going to Chrome, blocking third party cookies (that's what tracking cookies are) and using SuperAntiApyware (it is the best out there) to scan and remove. Chrome also has a way to add sites to the blocking list if any get through. I do this and
my machine is faster and tracking free!!

When Microsoft gets this capability, I will be back, not before.

Pay attention Microsoft!!

Brink · Jun 27, 2019

Managing Microsoft Edge in the enterprise

At last year’s Microsoft Ignite conference, we introduced the enterprise story for the web on Windows 10. Microsoft Edge is designed from the ground up to provide a , interoperable, and secure browsing experience; in addition, Internet Explorer 11 is also a part of Windows 10 to help bring all your legacy line of business (LOB) applications forward.

Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 work together to help ease IT management overhead, and also provide a seamless user experience for your users. In this post, we’ll walk through the policies you can use to manage Microsoft Edge in the enterprise for both PCs and mobile devices, including some new policies coming in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Policies currently supported in Microsoft Edge

With Microsoft Edge, we set out to provide a simple, consistent set of scenario-driven management policies to help manage Windows 10 browser deployments on both desktop and mobile. The policies for Microsoft Edge on desktop are available as both Group Policy settings and MDM settings. On mobile they are available as MDM settings.

Here is a summary of all the policies supported by Microsoft Edge grouped by Windows 10 releases:

Available in Windows 10 version 1507 or later:

Configure Autofill

Configure Cookies

Configure Do Not Track

Configure Password Manager

Configure Pop up Blocker

Configure search suggestions in the Address bar

Configure the Enterprise Mode Site List

Configure the SmartScreen Filter

Send all intranet sites to Internet Explorer 11

Available in Windows 10 version 1511 or later:

Allow Developer Tools

Allow InPrivate browsing

Allow web content on New Tab page

Configure Favorites

Configure Home pages (see additional note below)

Prevent bypassing SmartScreen prompts for files

Prevent bypassing SmartScreen prompts for sites

Prevent sharing LocalHost IP address for WebRTC

What’s new in Windows 10 Anniversary update

We have added support for the following new Microsoft Edge management policies as a part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update:

Allow access to the about:flags page

Allow usage of extensions

Configure WebRTC media port ranges

Show a transitional message when opening Internet Explorer sites

We’ve made a few updates to existing policies based on feedback from customers. First, all of the Microsoft Edge Group Policy settings on desktop are now available in both the User and Machine policy hives. Second, the home page policy configured on a domain-joined device will no longer allow the user to override the setting.

You can find further details on all Microsoft Edge policies on TechNet, including info about Windows 10 policies that also apply to Microsoft Edge, such as Cortana and Sync settings. Your feedback is important to us, so please let us know what you think or if you have any questions about these changes!

– Dalen Abraham, Principal Program Manager Lead
– Jatinder Mann, Senior Program Manager Lead
– Josh Rennert, Program Manager
Click to expand...

Source: Managing Microsoft Edge in the enterprise | Microsoft Edge Dev Blog

hurricane51 · Jun 27, 2019

Edge Search Does Not Permit Change of Region

I got these suggestions from the Microsoft Community forum.No. 1 worked for me:

Thank you for posting the query on Microsoft Community. I am glad to assist you on this.
We have reproduce the issue here and we are able to access non-regional search for google using Microsoft Edge.
I would suggest you to try the below steps and check if it helps.
Step 1:
Clear browsing data option of Microsoft Edge and check if you face the issue. To do so perform the steps below.

Click on the More actions icon next to the feedback icon present on top right corner of the Project Spartan homepage.

Select Settings and click on Choose what to clear.

Check the boxes Browsing history, Cookies and saved website data and Cached data and files and click on Clear.

Step 2:
I suggest you to create a new user account and check if the issue occurs.

Go to Settings.

Choose Accounts and then select Family and other users.

Select add someone else on this PC.

Enter a user name and hit next.

Click on Finish.

Sign out from the current Account and Log into the new account.

Step 3:
It could also happen because of network issue. I suggest you to try with different network connection and check if it helps.

Windows 10: Tracking prevention now available in Microsoft Edge preview builds

Tracking prevention now available in Microsoft Edge preview builds

Tracking prevention now available in Microsoft Edge preview builds

Tracking prevention now available in Microsoft Edge preview builds

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