There appears to be a bug in version 112 of the Microsoft Edge browser. A feature designed to track content creators everywhere is sending full URLs to a Bing domain. Fortunately, users can address this privacy issue.
The feature is enabled by default. To prevent this behavior in Edge, users can turn off this form of tracking with a few clicks. By navigating to ‘Privacy, search and services’ via Settings and scrolling to the bottom, users can turn off various web services, such as suggesting alternative websites or providing personalized recommendations. This also includes the content creator function, which sends URLs to bingapis.com.
Microsoft has now fixed the bug. Nevertheless, it can be beneficial for an organization to stop feeding Bing with URLs, regardless of their origin.
Security
The feature was designed to make it easier for Edge to keep track of users’ favorite content. The browser would usually only send URLs from media websites like YouTube, Reddit, and newspapers to give Bing more personalized search results. However, something seems to have gone wrong with the URL filtering, as there appears to be virtually no filtering, apart from omitting porn links, for example.
This can be a major privacy issue for organizations, as the data is sent directly to Microsoft. This includes IP addresses and local, private links. Previously, a link was only sent if it was on a website that had the content creator feature enabled. It is not desirable for an organization from a security point of view to have to trust Microsoft with its own links. Furthermore, it is impossible to know where the data is processed. If personal data in a data center ends up outside the European continent in this way, the feature is in violation of EU privacy legislation.
This is yet another example of the large amount of data gathering that big tech is involved in. Microsoft, Google, and Meta, among others, want to use this data for targeted advertisements or training AI models, for example. This privacy discussion often results in fines for large companies or amended legislation that should better protect the rights of citizens and organizations.
