Edge 118: updated on-page search may send data to Microsoft

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to Technology@lemmy.world – 266 points –
ghacks.net
37

Firefox: Found a way to translate webpages locally on the device, so you don't need to send any data

Edge: Made it so you can't CTRL-F without sending data to Microsoft

How does this work for sensitive information like banking sites? I know some healthcare software runs in the browser, surely this is a violation of those rules too.

surely this is a violation of those rules too.

Cost of business. The occasional two digit million fine opposing billions of revenue.

I think telemetry is disabled / very limited for enterprises.

If you sign in to your bank account through edge in your personal device then you agreed to whatever they say when you installed their os.

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Microsoft Edge submits the following data to Microsoft cloud services using a HTTPS connection:

The text of the webpage.

Interesting , this has implications for pages that are not on public internet. Viewing confidential/secret company documents in edge?

You left out the important bit before that:

When users enable "include related matches in Find on page", Microsoft Edge submits the following data to Microsoft cloud services using a HTTPS connection:

Seems like nothing gets sent if you do a normal exact search.

Yeah but isn't that what the whole article is about? And is it enabled by default or opt in?

Future edge patch note:

  • Fixed bug where sometimes edge would send pages to MS cloud despite local search only being enabled

Haha j/k, there won't be a patch note, and the fix will probably be a heuristic to determine if the user isn't a security expert analyzing their traffic to determine if it's sending more than it should be, with it defaulting to off until that heuristic reports a hit.

At this stage, I'm surprised that the keyboard drivers don't just send everything to Microsoft.

Although they probably already do.

Use Firefox

While you're at it, switch to Linux and be done with the Microsoft and spyware bullshit

Who tf uses edge if they have a choice.

It has a very good integration with the rest of Microsoft 365, which we have to use at our company

You've meant to say that they just make it a legit pain in the ass to use anything else.

There is no reason for that otherwise.

Both.

It is a pain in the ass to use the Microsoft online services with eg Firefox. Sometimes it is even impossible to log in for me.

But also the new Enterprise profile in Edge is very good if your company uses all of these services

The biggest problem I have with having to use Edge at my work is how it pushes bing (obviously) as the default search engine.

I swear it only becomes worse with time. Every query is now answered with that awful AI that is never, never on point. Seriously, it just pulls a bunch of random questions only vaguely related to your request and decides to list answers to those instead.

Of course this shit takes a whole screen before the actual search results show up. And at the bottom, just where all decent search engines put a "next page" button, instead they put a shortcut... to the AI crap again, back at the top of the page.

Yup. Coming from the company that brought you IE6 and ActiveX.

"But their cloud push is actually making their services available to more OS's, they're changing" some people said.

Bah

There's a reason they release Edge on fucking Linux, not a single person asked for this.

Imagine being on the team that maintains that though. Must be a very lonely position

All the stupid people.

People with different skills than you are not stupid. It takes a lot of time, energy, and effort to learn this kind of thing if you’re not interested in it.

We should be kind to others, and not assume superiority because we have skills or knowledge in one area they do not.

Using a privacy-friendly browser takes no more than”skill” than using Edge.

Well sure, that’s true. How do you know that edge isn’t privacy friendly? What about the carpenter who just wants to use their computer to pay bills and google stuff? What about the old folks who don’t know how to install something? What about the people who just don’t enjoy using a computer and haven’t had the opportunity to learn about it?

They’re no more stupid than you would be if you were using a cooking utensil the wrong way because you never learned the appropriate way to use it. Or if you use the space below your oven as storage for pans and cookie sheets instead of correctly using it as a broiler. Or maybe you have one that actually is storage. I wouldn’t know, because I cook simple meals and I’m fine with that. It doesn’t make me stupid. Nobody can know everything.

Here’s a relevant xkcd: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ten_thousand.png

It does, if you need to use the online Microsoft Services. Because In Firefox it sometimes is just not working for me. And I don't want to spend the time to figured out what the problem light be.

Edge is honestly a decent browser now. It's easily on par with chrome based on features, UX, and privacy issues. It's just a question of who you want to abuse your data: Google or Microsoft.

Firefox is the answer, of course, and it's all I'll use. But when it comes to compatability with websites and zero-issue usability by non-technical users in a work setting, it's hard to beat chromium based browsers.

How much of that is a workaround to feed client rendered webpages into LLMs and bypass robots.txt etc

I mean, if you want to go around what the site wants you to do, you can just ignore robots.txt. Or use it to find the juicy stuff the site would rather you didn't.

"May"?

It’s schroeder’s telemetry.

Your data will be in a superposition.

Edit: I mean Schrödinger's telemetry.

Schroeder? The piano playing kid from The Peanuts?

Will block it all even if the product was free.