Microsoft Ad Execs Nuked IE8 Privacy Features
The Internet Explorer 8 development team wanted more user-controlled privacy settings.
Did Microsoft choose company profit over consumer privacy? That's what a recent article from the Wall Street Journal indicates, reporting that Internet Explorer 8 could have been more secure on the privacy front had Microsoft advertising executives not stepped in and thwarted the plans.
According to the report, the Internet Explorer 8 team wanted the browser to offer users a simple way to avoid being tracked online by automatically blocking tracking tools. These tools were determined based on the number of times 3rd-party content appeared online--items appearing on ten or more visited sites constituted as a tracking tool, and would be blocked. The only way to make the browser less private was to manually change the settings in the Internet Options menu.
The problem with this concept was that--by giving automatic privacy to customers--Microsoft would have a hard time making a profit from selling online ads. Keeping mouse clicks private would prevent advertisers from viewing user habits and thus make it difficult to advertise the correct product or service. The proposal by the development team sparked an in-house heated debate between the ad execs and the browser group. Eventually, the browser group lost.
As it stands now, Internet Explorer 8 supposedly requires the user to deliberately turn on privacy settings--aka InPrivate Filtering--every time they load up the browser. This setting is found under Tools / Internet Options / Privacy, labeled as "Do not collect data for use by InPrivate Filtering." However upon testing this feature, the box remained checked even after closing and re-launching the browser several times.
To read more on the entire internal debate--including the unreleased InPrivate Subscriptions feature (blocking suspicious web addresses)--head here.
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Firefox FTW.
I agree Firefox all the way, you cant beat adblockplus. It's really suprising how much your online experience is slowed down by constant adverts and tracking tools.
Can anyone honestly be surprised at this?
Ad revenue is big business folks. If blocking ads is only for the "leet" users, fine, that is usually less than a percent data/revenue. But if a large section of their ad revenue goes dark...
Chrome ftw
Only one thing to say : go to hell M$ & Steve Ballmer
I agree Firefox all the way, you cant beat adblockplus. It's really suprising how much your online experience is slowed down by constant adverts and tracking tools.
+1. And adding NoScript along with AdBlock Plus really reduces down the chance of bad things happening and getting to your system.
I'm not using IE unless I asbolutely have to. Occasionally I find something that won't work in Firefox so I crank up IE. When I do a new OS install, I immediately crank up IE, so I can download Firefox.
Nobody has yet proven to me that Chrome and Opera are as secure as Firefox.
Opera
That's what you get when you go with Microsoft. Corporate BS. Use real software from real people. Open Source FTW.
Only one thing to say : go to hell M$ & Steve Ballmer
...and what OS are you running?...lol People make me laugh. Tried them all and always came back to IE. My company only supports IE for our VPN anyway. I see no reason for it to be otherwise.
That's what you get when you go with Microsoft. Corporate BS. Use real software from real people. Open Source FTW.
Since Windows runs 90%+ of the world's computers I'd say a few people disagree with you...lol
Since Windows runs 90%+ of the world's computers I'd say a few people disagree with you...lol
Well played
lol...welcome to how the world operates. Ever notice that even the open-source browsers don't have particularly good security settings out of the box?
dont laugh. i like ie8.
FireFox all the way along with AdBlock Plus! and OpenDNS.
No problem using the back button this way.
Use Internet Explorer with OpenDNS and anything else that blocks unwanted domains and try to use the back button on sites full of advertisements such Microsoft TechNet and you'll be forever trying to click back cause even though the Ads were blocked, the scripts still load.
At least with FireFox and AdBlock Plus! the scripts can easily be blocked just as easily as the Adverts.
They know everything anyway, but just to hate Gates for being ugly I use firefox.
Since Windows runs 90%+ of the world's computers I'd say a few people disagree with you...lol
...and the other 10% hack the crap out of the 90% of people running swiss cheese...
Who uses IE anyway? Perhaps the employees at Microsoft, although I would imagine they would probably use Firefox or Opera if it was their choice.
...and the other 10% hack the crap out of the 90% of people running swiss cheese...
LOL. Too funny. Although I am sure you know that the 10% would be hacking that 90% regardless of what it was.
Its a shame that Microsoft's been plagued with news of internal struggle recently. I would've rather seen privacy valued first, but its a shame.
That is the wrong setting.
It is located under Safety / InPrivate Filtering Settings or (from the classic menus) Tools / InPrivate Filtering Settings
To permanently enable it AND use AdBlock Plus filters, follow the guide here http://www.vista4beginners.com/AdB [...] Explorer-8
yay chrome and adblock. ads never even load! out of sight, and out of mind.
That is the wrong setting.It is located under Safety / InPrivate Filtering Settings or (from the classic menus) Tools / InPrivate Filtering SettingsTo permanently enable it AND use AdBlock Plus filters, follow the guide here http://www.vista4beginners.com/AdB [...] Explorer-8
Oh, and it does work beautifully. The interface is not quite as convenient as the real AdBlock Plus (right clicking on items to add them to the block list), but there is a HUGE reduction in ads and trackers.
I was always lost by this. If i enter in a site that i want to visit for services or products. Then i leave it, then all of a sudden that site is in adds in many places i go, whats the point of the ad?
Gaming, If i got to a gaming site and it is advertising some game, whats wrong with that? But then sometimes its like, why is this game being adviretised here? Most times it no big deal almost completely understandable, then its like "What?" And most the time there "free" flash games or Trial MMOs, which need to find some way of ads. Alot of game reveiw sites are just full and making new ones get confusing due to the vast amount, and sites getting reviews over others. But thats the gaming part of it.
The rest though it weird, the one big thing thats cool is learning of something you might not search directly. Biggest loss in not having them. Marketing the internet is tuff. I'd say. But there are ways to find the things you want or need, but there is a line somewhere though.
Since Windows runs 90%+ of the world's computers I'd say a few people disagree with you...lol
Wrong. windows runs 90% of the world's *desktop* peecee's. On the other hand, serious computing, like you know, what runs the whole internet, is all done on UNIX.
Wrong. windows runs 90% of the world's *desktop* peecee's. On the other hand, serious computing, like you know, what runs the whole internet, is all done on UNIX.
I hate to break it to you, but even in Web hosting Microsoft has (or recently had, haven't been tracking this myself) a lead with IIS hosting the highest share of web sites. There was an article about that here on Tom's around the time GoDaddy switched to all IIS hosting...
You are right that in server installations Microsoft doesn't have a commanding share, but the server market you chose was unfortunate for your argument
These greedy moneysuckers!
lol how thickle some are (will moan at anything for the sake of it).... advertising is a normal part of the web business (look on the right of tom's for example)...
And you have in private mode (clearly visable unless you are blind) which caches nothing and is safe as houses.... i don't see what there is to complain about here ...it does it's job well and causes me no problems so i couldnt give a hoot ^^
I hate to break it to you, but even in Web hosting Microsoft has (or recently had, haven't been tracking this myself) a lead with IIS hosting the highest share of web sites. There was an article about that here on Tom's around the time GoDaddy switched to all IIS hosting...You are right that in server installations Microsoft doesn't have a commanding share, but the server market you chose was unfortunate for your argument . It's more serious servers like for banking and in supercomputers that run Unix.
According to netcraft http://news.netcraft.com/archives/ [...] #more-2462, Apache is running the majority of the sites it surveyed. Although we dont know what OS they are run on...
I really hate when people try to compare a single product with another only to mention that other product's add-ons as the only thing which make it better than the first product.
Adblock and NoScript ARE NOT PART OF FIREFOX. They are third-party applications and are not included within Firefox itself. So when all of you people say that Firefox is better because of what they do, you're full of crap.
There ARE IE add-ons for adblock'ing and noscript'ing too.
I'm not using IE unless I asbolutely have to. Occasionally I find something that won't work in Firefox so I crank up IE. When I do a new OS install, I immediately crank up IE, so I can download Firefox.Nobody has yet proven to me that Chrome and Opera are as secure as Firefox.
Personally, I use the IE Tab add-on when a page does not render properly in Firefox.