The online habits of most people who use the world’s dominant Web browser are an open book to advertisers. That wasn’t the plan at first.
In early 2008, Microsoft Corp.’s product planners for the Internet Explorer 8.0 browser intended to give users a simple, effective way to avoid being tracked online. They wanted to design the software to automatically thwart common tracking tools, unless a user deliberately switched to settings affording less privacy.
That triggered heated debate inside Microsoft. As the leading maker of Web browsers, the gateway software to the Internet, Microsoft must balance conflicting interests: helping people surf the Web with its browser to keep their mouse clicks private, and helping advertisers who want to see those clicks.
In the end, the product planners lost a key part of the debate. The winners: executives who argued that giving automatic privacy to consumers would make it tougher for Microsoft to profit from selling online ads. Microsoft built its browser so that users must deliberately turn on privacy settings every time they start up the software.
Found by Cinàedh.
Only the institutionally impaired (i.e. at locked down workplaces) have to use IE. Can’t think of another reason to use it, given the alternatives.
Anyone surprised that M$ SCREWED IT’S CUSTOMERS ? Use Firefox !
The only use for IE is to download a decent browser.
hang on…
so Microsoft innovates and creates an “in private” mode…. but bows to pressure (internally and externally … go search the web for people threatening to sue if MS release this as the default)
Google and others eventually follow suite but… also don’t turn it on by default (because they exist pretty much totally on ad revenue) … yet no-one bitches at them for not raising the bar when they easily could.
Ironically, both IE and Chrome can be run in cloaked mode by default just by adding a simple option to the desktop shortcut….
http://tinyurl.com/32nbz7a
you’ll also want to turn off the “safe site” filters etc (in both products) and the enhanced auto-suggest search functions to stop sharing that data
Use Google Chrome!
Some clueless replies so far, especially #2 and #4. Are you people unaware that Firefox and Chrome also do not turn on/enable InPrivate browsing by default and that you have to select the privacy mode just as you do with IE? Or is your knee jerking so hard that it kept you from stopping to think?
Internet Explorer runs as Administrator, so this compromises all of Microsoft Windows, doesn’t it?
#4
Pfft. Chrome still lets through plenty of web bugs and trackers. Until NoScript runs on Chome, it won’t be nearly as privacy-safe as Firefox with the combination of Ad Block Plus, NoScript and Ghostery.
#6
It has long been the case that you can run IE as a standard user.
What someone should have pointed out in this debate at Microsoft is that some of the first extensions for Firefox and still some of the most popular are those that protect the privacy of the user. That alone should have been a clue that the users are not keen on advertisers collecting all this information about them.
This harvesting of user data covertly could be the death of the online and mobile internet…
I could live without either, I did it before and I could do it again.
Give me back my black old ‘dial’ telephone… And my dad’s 1955 Buick Century convertible.
Remember those?
We need the geeks to save us!
Microsoft, Apple and Google have a vested interest in our LACK OF ANONYMITY on the web. Oppressive governments like China and UAE love it too.
The geeks need to build anonymity right into the web and our software. Private industry and governments aren’t going to do it.
Your ISP, employer and country should have no way of knowing what sites you are visiting.
Your search engine should have no way of knowing who are where you are.
And NOBODY should be able to snoop your email or address book.
The best explanation of why Microsoft is messed up I heard when I was working there about 7 years ago, told to me by an old-timer from IBM.
He said that in the late 90s IBM had a huge cull of their middle and upper management. Most of this IBM useless dead-wood was then hired by Microsoft. These ex-IBMers quickly installed rafts of procedures, extra layers of management and a crippling internal bureaucracy -the company has been hobbled ever since.
I was only there briefly as a contractor so I don’t think he was trying to wind me up.