IE8 and Privacy

Article
08/25/2008

As others have written here before, users should be in control of their information. That’s at the core of privacy. Privacy has two aspects: disclosure and choice. Disclosure means informing users in plain language about the data collected about them and how it’s used. Choice means putting users in control of their data and giving them tools to protect it.

Have you ever wanted to take your web browsing “off the record”? Perhaps you’re using someone else’s computer and you don’t want them to know which sites you visited. Maybe you need to buy a gift for a loved one without ruining the surprise. Maybe you’re at an Internet kiosk and don’t want the next person using it to know at which website you bank.

What if you want to delete your browsing history after the fact, but you don’t want to lose your preferences at websites that you use frequently?

When we began planning IE8, we took a hard look at our customers’ concerns about privacy on the web. As evidenced by some of the comments on this blog during the IE7 days, many users are concerned about so-called “over-the-shoulder privacy”, or the ability to control what their spouses, friends, kids, and co-workers might see.

What about your privacy as you browse the web? As Dean outlined is his post earlier today, there is so-called “3^rd-party” content on websites, some of which can gather data about how you browse the web. How do you know what that is, or how to control it?

With respect to privacy, IE8 gives users more choice about controlling what information they keep and exchange. In the first part of this post I’ll describe two Internet Explorer 8 features that help you control your history, cookies, and other information that Internet Explorer stores on your behalf. In the latter part, I’ll describe two more features that can help you control how your browsing history is shared by websites. By default, IE8 browses the web the same way IE7 does.

InPrivate™ Browsing lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data
Delete Browsing History helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited websites.
InPrivate™ Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it
InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow.

InPrivate Browsing

If you are using a shared PC, a borrowed laptop from a friend, or a public PC, sometimes you don’t want other people to know where you’ve been on the web. Internet Explorer 8’s InPrivate Browsing makes that “over the shoulder” privacy easy by not storing history, cookies, temporary Internet files, or other data.

Using InPrivate Browsing is as easy as launching a new InPrivate Browsing window. When you’re done, just close the window and IE will take care of the rest.

InPrivate Browsing Homepage

While InPrivate Browsing is active, the following takes place:

New cookies are not stored
- All new cookies become “session” cookies
- Existing cookies can still be read
- The new DOM storage feature behaves the same way
New history entries will not be recorded
New temporary Internet files will be deleted after the Private Browsing window is closed
Form data is not stored
Passwords are not stored
Addresses typed into the address bar are not stored
Queries entered into the search box are not stored
Visited links will not be stored

Delete Browsing History

In Internet Explorer 7, we added a feature called Delete Browsing History that lets you delete in one click all of the information that IE saves. This is a necessary tool that is a standard feature in all modern web browsers. If there are things in your web browsing past that you want to erase, you can do that easily.

The problem is that usually you don’t want to delete everything! Cookies, in particular, are really useful for storing preferences on websites that you use frequently. Many sites have a “remember me” option, which stores a cookie on your PC and identifies your user account. Other sites, particularly financial websites, will store a cookie on each computer that you use to eliminate extra challenge questions (i.e. “What was your high school mascot?”).

IE8 solves this problem by adding an option that lets you keep cookies and temporary Internet files from websites saved in your Favorites list:

IE8 Delete Browsing History Settings

To avoid having your favorite sites “forget you”, simply add them to your Favorites, and make sure the “Preserve Favorites website data” checkbox is selected. IE will preserve any cookies or cache files that were created by websites in your favorites.

Oh – and by the way – we heard your feedback about checkboxes! Now Delete Browsing History will remember your preferences. We also added a “Delete Browsing History on Exit” feature if you really want to keep your history squeaky-clean! To do so, click Tools->Internet Options:

IE8 Delete Browsing History Preferences

In his post earlier today, Dean outlined some of the privacy issues surrounding third-party content, which powers some of the rich experiences you get on the web today, such as interactive maps and social networking shortcuts (“add to Digg”).

Some third-party content is shared by multiple websites. If you happen to browse to sites that refer to the same third-party resource, i.e. a script, image, stylesheet, information is sent to that third-party. Over time, the third-party can create a profile of which websites you go to, what links you click on, etc. It’s hard to know exactly how your data will be used and with whom it will be shared without reading and understanding the privacy policy of each third-party site providing content to the website you visit,.

Consider this hypothetical example. You walk into a shopping mall. In the middle of the shopping mall, there is someone in front of a kiosk who asks you if he can record what stores you visit while you’re there as part of a survey. In order to do so, he writes down a description of what you look like – not your name – but what you’re wearing, your height, etc. In several of the stores throughout the mall, there are people who identify you based on this data, and record whether or not you visit a particular store. When the mall closes, the surveyors in the store report their tallies back to the kiosk. What the surveyor ends up with is a list of some of the stores you visit while you’re at the mall.

This is analogous to how some third-party content works on the web today. Again, without reading specific privacy policies, it’s hard to say in general what third-parties do with the data (or whether or not they record it at all).

The first difference between this mall example and the real world is that the mall survey is hypothetical. Again, different third-party sites do different things with the data they can collect, and the best way to understand what they actually do is reading their privacy policy. The other major difference between this example and the web is how explicitly users are presented with a choice about sharing their information. Clearly there are benefits to sharing your information, starting with richer experiences. Many web sites rely on third-parties to provide content and services like interactive maps and financial data, or analytics and advertising in order to operate effectively. These third-party services often collect information in order to do their jobs. There are also potential drawbacks, such as privacy risks (who has what information?) and increased exposure to malicious content. Put simply, the web relies on a trade, or value exchange, between users and sites. Information goes back and forth: in exchange for “free” services and content, users “pay” with information, not money. There is nothing wrong with such a trade, as long as users are informed and are in control of the choice.

InPrivate Blocking

InPrivate Blocking is a feature designed to help give you information about third-party content that has a line of sight into your web browsing, and gives you a choice about what information you share with these sites. As Dean mentioned in his post, it’s possible for sites to track users without cookies. The only way to ensure that your data is not disclosed is to block content and prevent communication to sites.

While you browse the web, your IE keeps a local record of which third-party items your browser accesses, and where they were accessed from. For example, if you visit https://www.contoso.com/index.html, which contains the following snippet:

<html>
<head> <title> Contoso.com Homepage </head>
…
<script src=https://www.woodgrove-int.com/tracking.js>
…
</html>

and then visit https://www.wingtiptoys.com/, which contains the same snippet:

<html>
<head> <title> Great deals at Wingtiptoys.com </head>
…
<script src=https://www.woodgrove-int.com/tracking.js>
…
</html>

Woodgrove-int.com is now in a position to know that you’ve been to both contoso.com and wingtiptoys.com.

InPrivate Blocking keeps a record of third-party items like the one above as you browse. When you choose to browse with InPrivate, IE automatically blocks sites that have “seen” you across more than ten sites.

You can also manually choose items to block or allow, or obtain information about the third-party content directly from the site by clicking the “More information from this website” link. Note that Internet Explorer will only record data for InPrivate Blocking when you are in “regular” browsing mode, as no browsing history is retained while browsing InPrivate. An easy way to think of it is that your normal browsing determines which items to block when you browse InPrivate.

InPrivate Blocking Settings

InPrivate Subscriptions

Users can augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking with InPrivate Subscriptions. Some users want to protect their privacy, but don’t want to make granular decisions about content to block or allow. Users can delegate these decisions to publishers of InPrivate Subscriptions. Users can subscribe to a list the same way they add an Accelerator, Web Slice, or search provider to IE: by clicking a link on a web page and confirming that they want this functionality:

InPrivate Blocking Subscription Settings

Under the covers, InPrivate Subscriptions are simply RSS feeds of Regular Expressions that specify sub-downloads to block or allow. Anyone can publish an InPrivate Subscription on their website, just as they can offer an Accelerator or Web Slice on their website. We’ll post details about the file format as part of the updated IE8 Developer’s Guide with Beta 2.

Conclusion

IE8 helps put you in control of your data, both on your PC and on the Web. IE8 Beta 2 is coming soon, and I encourage you to download it and give us feedback.

Andy Zeigler
Program Manager

P.S. Check out Dean and Andy talking about IE8 and Privacy on Channel 9.

Edit: Added a P.S.

Comments

Anonymous
August 25, 2008
PingBack from http://hubsfunnywallpaper.cn/?p=2221
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
This looks like a good set of features. But, I think the question that practically everyone who reads this blog wants to know is - "When will Beta 2 be available?"
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
This looks cool. Is this also configurable with group policies.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
@Will Peavy: As I mentioned a while back,(http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/06/03/ie8-beta-2-coming-in-august.aspx) we're planning on releasing beta 2 in August. There are still a few days left...
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
@ajo Yes, like most IE features, IT Admins can configure and control these features via Group Policy.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
@Will Peavy: Roumors say it's August 28th. And since the team still says it's August, this must be it. I doubt a release will happen on Friday.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
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Anonymous
August 25, 2008
@Xepol I thought the same thing. I saw that there were 2 new posts and thought awesome since their last post about CSS maybe they have some updates. Was I completely wrong? I am deeply sadden, I hope that only 1 person on the IE team worked on this otherwise, it was a complete time waster on their part.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
What is it with saving screenshots as jpeg and then converting them to png?
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
my concern is that one is not able to determine at a glance what mode one is fully using. my suggestion:

let the address bar say INPRIVATE when browsing inprivate and not using blocking
let the address bar say INPRIVATE BLOCKING when browsing inprivate and using blocking
let the address bar say BLOCKING when browsing normally (not inprivate) and using blocking
let the address bar say nothing when browsing normally (not inprivate) and not using blocking. I have not seen the beta; if this has already been done, bravo!!! Now, it would be nice if "inprivate blocking" was just called "blocking", to avoid confusion with simply "inprivate". If you are concerned that "idiots" might think their browsing is somehow blocked when they see "BLOCKING" then call it "INPRIVATE PLUS".

Anonymous
August 25, 2008
I don't think a big blue button announcing to everyone that you're using enhanced privacy settings is very private. I believe Mozilla Firefox 3.1 will include a similar, but less conspicuous feature and will be released around the same time at the end of this year.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Please help me to understand this clearer, "InPrivate browsing" is not "Anonymous browsing" , and "inPrivate blocking browsing" is just "partial anonymos browsing? since if the users dont have any history then they can not browse the web anonymously? So there is no way to browse the web anonymously? and this new "inPrivate" feature is only good when using strange computers? Thanks
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
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Anonymous
August 25, 2008
So web site developers will not be able to rely on commonly used Javascript files (like Google Analytics) any more? One would have to proxy it through your own site to avoid the 10-site filter. Ugh.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Congratulations on the new privacy feature. The new in-private and blocking modes are certainly a first step in the right direction and will help raise broader awareness about privacy issues on today's Web. Please also provide new APIs for add-on developers such as notifying add-ons about when inprivate mode is on or off, and allow them to enalbe or disable it programmatically.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
like browsing history - where you can adjust the length of time history is kept (default is 20), does one have the option of adjusting the inprivate blocking default of 10 sites?
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
It would be nice to see an option to delete just third party cookies as well as to block all third party cookies. A nice advanced feature would be to have preferred/popular sites that a user visits have their cookies protected from general clearing of private data. For example when I clear my cookies I have to log back in to DevNetwork, Hotmail, Yahoo, and some other sites I frequent. It would be nice to have IE realize this and help me avoid the task of signing back in (for general clearing of private data).
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
  IE 8 Beta 2: Privacy is about more than cookies As others have written here before, users should
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
“Preserve Favorites website data” should have an option to choose which web sites to preserve data from, not only the ones from "Favorites". What if I don't want to preserve data from a site or two that's in my Favorites (and still keep data from other sites in my Favorites)? ex. I would like to have "http://blogs.msdn.com/" in my Favorites but I want to delete browsing history from this site and at the same time - preserve data from "http://www.microsoft.com/" which is also in my Favorites folder.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
"with InPrivate, IE automatically blocks sites that have “seen” you across more than ten sites." Does this apply to blocking third party scripts, like let's say Google analyatics ...? Could be a lot of sites no longer can get stats ...
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Microsoft on Monday described some new privacy features that will come with IE8, the next release of
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Cool. I like the new feature added to Delete Browsing History. It would be even better if you could specify a specific folder in your Favorites, if you wanted to.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
"preserve favorite website data" sounds like an incredibly useful feature for me, and so is the "InPrivate" browsing. Though, for the latter, I won't need it at my home computer, while guests I visit often tend to not have the latest IE installed. Hopefully IE8 will be distributed through Windows Update faster than IE7 was.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
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Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Would this feature get around parental controls software?
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
I was under the impression that I was going to have to wait until Microsoft shipped Internet Explorer
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
@L No, the InPrivate features are disabled if Windows Vista Parental Controls are turned on for that user. This is not a way to circumvent Windows Parental Controls.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
I am impressed by the new privacy features! They do give me certain misgivings, though; there are sites in my Favorites that I would like to have the cookies deleted from, and vice-versa. One question: if I put a top-level domain in my favorites, will the cookie data for all the sub-domains be saved as well? Good work, IE team! The future keeps looking brighter!
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Get rid of drive-by spyware installations and I'm all for IE any day.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
IE8 and Privacy. 오호~ IE8에서는 개인 정보 보호를 위해 InPrivate라는 새로운 기능이 내장되는구나. 이 기능을 활성화하면 새로운 쿠키, 히스토리, 임시 인터넷 파일, 양식, 비밀 번호, 검색어, 입력된 주소, 방문 링크 클리어.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
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Anonymous
August 25, 2008
@Mike, Lawrence, Mogden: From my reading of the blog, the blocking only takes place when the user is using InPrivate Browsing: "InPrivate Blocking keeps a record of third-party items like the one above as you browse. When you choose to browse with InPrivate, IE automatically blocks sites that have “seen” you across more than ten sites. .... An easy way to think of it is that your normal browsing determines which items to block when you browse InPrivate." I will admit I am confused though -- it seems like a lot of work, for something that only takes effect during InPrivate Browsing. What about the "subscriptions" -- are they still only for during InPrivate Browsing as well, or are they for all the time?
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Looks like their improving the UI in beta 2. I love the colors used for the tab-bar, however I do miss the favbar in this first picture... But still, the best looking tab-bar design is Opera 9.5... However, back to the subject. I really love this functionality, but is it possible as webmaster to require people to turn on this functionality? For example, PayPal or an other very important site, feels it's a good security decision to have your cookies and stuff cleaned after visit, and that your system leaved no trace at all. Wouldn't it be great if they forward me to inPrivate automatically, so when I leave the site, my system is clean? And with Vista folder recovery, how deleted are my temporally files after visit? Why are those pictures still being saved on my hard drive, and not in my memory? Private = Private, and not just in IE, I think....
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Do I understand correctly that if a site is blocked that has shown snippets on 10 or more sites that it is blocked from that time onwards also when you revisit those ten sites ? How long is the memorylist for remembering those ten sites ? Would it also block ads served up from 3rd party servers after having served ads ten times ? (which a lot of us really wouldn't mind at all) Does this feature block on domain level or subdomain level and if blocking on subdomain level how would it handle possibly generated subdomains like vbrefsdi.googlesyndication.com ?
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Kudos to you. Thanks for adding these features. I hope they don't get dropped in the final release.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
On the whole, I think this is a good idea. Nice to see new features being implemented. As many people above, I would be interested to know how it will affect things such as Google Analytics.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
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Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Whatever anyone says about hitting Google is irrelevant - Privacy first. And if it is targetting Google - BRAVO! That's giving the consumer what they want and playing hardball at the same time.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Whatever anyone says about hitting Google is irrelevant - Privacy first. And if it is targetting Google - BRAVO! That's giving the consumer what they want and playing hardball at the same time.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Mike & Ziro: Where do you get this from? It's like you're reading this article from an alternate universe where 2/3 of it is deleted and what remains is "IE8...blocks...3rd party...content", skipping the part where it only works if you usually browse without this feature and then you specifically invoke a special mode for a relatively rare set of circumstances where you have a legitimate privacy concern.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
@ziro This 'feature' will block Analytics or AdSense or whatever that have been visited more than 10 times only when in InPrivate mode.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
great feature, but how about performance?Firefox 3.1 is seven times faster than Firefox 3 as the outperformance spidermonkey javascript engine, so how about IE8?Ten times?
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Why would you loudly announce to every 'shoulder-surfer' that the user has enabled privacy mode? You might as well slap a "terrorist using computer!" sign across the top for the same emotional effect on your users.
Why an arbitrary limit on 10 remote files? Why not 1 or zero? Have you any concept of how this will affect technical support? "Sorry sir, you can't our site 11 times!"
Have you considered the risk that you are implying a session is "private" when in fact you know that is lie (since business and government groups can buy or coerce site logs directly from ISPs)?
Are you planning to add "Microsoft Corporation" as a default provider of, or exception to, "bad" sites?
Why does InPrivacy(tm) require a trademark anyway? Why not InTabs(tm) and InMostlyStandardsCompliantMode(tm)? Seriously, if you start trademarking preference settings where do you stop? You know this one time I almost believed you were planning to make a browser that wouldn't require special attention to fix its quirks. The previous posters was correct. We designers loath you and you keep giving us new reasons why.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Hey,

This is great stuff but I have a serious question for IE Team : Can we expect to launch an InPrivate tab in "normal" session (ie with "normal" tabs) ?

Anonymous
August 25, 2008
The block only applies to InPrivate browsing, not regular browsing. And Firefox does block content too, it's called "adblock". You may have heard of it.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Content is only blocked if the user run IE in "InPrivate" mode. Common users will don't do that and Google Analytics will still work for these. AdBlock (FF Free Extension) can be got on IE with IEPro (IE Free Extension). It's very similar but have only one lack : CSSFilters that AdBlockPlus have. But we're hoping an new adblock API for IEPro v3.0, taht will probably implements CSSFilters.
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
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Anonymous
August 25, 2008
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Anonymous
August 25, 2008
• East Coast rules in broadband, study says -- Time to move! • The best gaming PC money can buy -- In three different price ranges, from less than $1,000 and up. Way up. • If Everyone's Talking, Who Will...
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
Hey, @Arieta, FremyCompany,

That's not my point actually. What i'm trying to say is : Can we have a window with InPrivate tabs AND regular tabs ? I mean in the same window. Hope it's clear now :)

Anonymous
August 26, 2008
@bilbo Consider the fact that people might not want people to analyse their site behaviour and certainly not share that info with a third party like google. And if they really wanted give info to suc third parties they can switch of InPrivate blocking. And if you really want to analyse your visitors then use an analysing tool that originates from your own domain and not from google. And btw bilbo, are you informing all your visitors that on your site Google is watching what the visitors are doing or do you provide them with and opt-in to that ?
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Oh Microsoft, Oh Microsoft. You keep shooting yourself in the foot. I feel the sudden urge to develop code and have it implemented on sites to block any user using IE8. A few lines of Javascript and one frustrated consumer. Don't think Google would mind helping in campaigning this. Just one more reason FireFox seems to be such a better browser. Tracking a persons actions through a site is by no means invasive. No other information is captured except for what the browser can obtain which is at best IP address. Unless, they are submitting their information to a website or signing up for something. By which they are voluntarily passing information over for tracking purposes. It is basically a site counter. I guess that little counter of visits on people's web pages is also an invasion of my privacy. It is the same exact thing. Why do you consistantly put yourself at odds with other companies. I am going to love watching this unfold. Note now... users will be blocked from websites using IE8. It is our choice as a business to sell to who we want and it is your choice as a consumer to not be tracked. I wonder which one will win out. Have fun.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
I would Love to see the Implementation of this Feature in Internet Explorer 8... SO just four Days left in arrival of September.....I hope We will be able to get hands on BY August !!!!
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Thanks. I don't know much about IE8. My main hope is that it will adhere to all the CSS I always read about that says IEx has a quirk that requires X. I read it about other browsers sometimes, but since IE is the most used it is always there. I really hope IE 8 does everything everybody else does that goes with the standards.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
In contrast to most of these silly comments I have actually read the post and would like to say thanks. My only small wish would be to change the option to save all cookie information for sites in favorites to a site/site approach, however I can understand this may confuse less technical users.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Just reading the description of the IE8 privacy features confirms my belief that Microsoft products are becoming too bloated with features. Other browsers, like Firefox, focus on simplifying the user experience rather than making more features that operate in a complicated fashion. Still, the same Microsoft drones who continue to use IE products because they don't know any better will not understand how the Privacy features really work. If I have to browse normally (with no privacy) to generate privacy lists for use in Private browsing, what's the point? The one thing done right was to provide privacy subscriptions. If I used IE, I would subscribe to a list and then browse privately forever so that third-parties cannot track my browsing. I also agree with other comments: Where is the innovation Microsoft? Deleting browsing history/files is an old feature, even if you've added options to save favorites.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
another pathetically weak feature from the ie team.. way to go guys... NOT
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Consumers need to be taught to use the web wisely, not buy into all the unfounded paranoia that a pixel is a bad thing. The only thing that wins in this situation is ignorance you are enforcing. Microsoft, what will you do when Atlas has problems because of your fear mongering? You bought them for a reason didn't you, and they use pixels don't they?
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
this is such an awesome feature :) keep up the good work IE Team
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Die n�chste Beta-Version des Internet Explorer 8 steht vor der T�r und diese wird wieder einige interessante Funktionen mitbringen. Zur Zeit liest man �berall von InPrivate Browsing, einer Reihe von Funktionen, die den Schutz der Privatsph�re beim Browse
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
I think these are some cool features but there's space to improve. Where does the magic number 'ten sites' come from? Let me decide the number, but don't put another undiscoverable setting on the awful designed advanced internet options page... Also the 'InPrivate Blocking settings' dialog looks pretty unmaintainable. On the screenshot there's already not enough space. Imagine if there are more than a dozen items!
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
when that beta will be released??
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Are you kidding me? This page has a tracking pixel!!!!! YOU ARE NOT SECURE!!! MICROSOFT IS TRACKING YOU!!!! <!img src="http://c.microsoft.com/trans_pixel.aspx?TYPE=PV" width="0" height="0" alt="Page view tracker" /> So are you telling me you are going to block your own tracking? Block Atlas's tracking? This is a sever short sited attempt to prey on people's ingorance and paranoia. The ecommerce industry is going to love you guys. By the way, didn't you already have this shot down in IE7 because of industry pressure?
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Oh wait found some more...  <!SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript"> var gTrackEvents=0; var gDomain="m.webtrends.com"; var gDcsId="dcsrubpmj00000oqcq95ilr3l_8q8i"; var gFpc="WT_FPC"; if(document.cookie.indexOf(gFpc+"=")==-1){document.write("<SCR"+"IPT TYPE='text/javascript' SRC='"+"http"+(window.location.protocol.indexOf('https:')==0?'s':'')+"://"+gDomain+"/"+gDcsId+"/wtid.js"+"'></SCR"+"IPT>");} </SCRIPT> <!SCRIPT SRC="/wt.js" TYPE="text/javascript"></SCRIPT> <NOSCRIPT> <!IMG ALT="" BORDER="0" ID="DCSIMG" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" SRC="http://m.webtrends.com/dcsrubpmj00000oqcq95ilr3l_8q8i/njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript&WT.js=No"> </NOSCRIPT>
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
What about stopping random plugins from modifying the UA string. I see hundreds of UA strings with tracking UID's built in. Why would you need a cookie if you have that? Randomizing the UA string would be a better solution.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
ziro says above: "if google had a widely distributed browser"... guess what? (it's firefox)
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
What do you bet Microsoft created a way for them to continue collecting stats on everyone while trying to shut down all of their competition. This to me sounds like Microsoft using its monopoly on Windows and IE against all of its online competitors for advertisements, and user tracking data. While I'm sure they have had all the time in the world to alter their online products to work with this new "feature".
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
And here come the conspiracy guy
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Where is the download manager??!!!!!!!!1
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Am I able to set it as instead of "Delete all browsing history when exit" to only a few things (not all of them) to be deleted when exit?
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Is it possible that a website logs my remote IP-address when surfing in private mode?
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Safari had "Private browsing" for quite a while...
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
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Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Microsoft, talking of privacy !! rotfl ! Microsoft is the biggest and more dangerous spyware of all the computing... Firefox and Free Software rules !
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
En el blog de Internet Explorer 8 se muestra InPrivate, el nombre que se le dió a las herramientas de privacidad en ese navegador y que, al menos por arriba, son mucho mejores que cualquiera que haya en el mercado ahora.Básicamente hay un par de cosas
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
IE sucks! basta de copiar las cosas de otros navegadores como firefox, ejemplo: el panel de eliminacion de cookies, paginas visitadas, etc!
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
@Town Idiot25: Yes - since we changed to checkboxes in the Delete Browsing History UI, you can now save your preferences for what you want to be deleted. Selecting "delete on exit" will use these settings. Just make sure you select the stuff you want to delete in delete browsing history and you'll be good to go. @D34: Absolutely. InPrivate is not an IP address anonymization solution. There are interesting projects out there that tackle this, such as Tor and Anonymizer. @Confused: InPrivate Blocking will only block 3rd-party items that the user has browsed on at least 10 different 1st-party sites. Common cookie perf optimizations will be unaffected.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
NoScript in Firefox does it's job perfectly :-P
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
What about Google Ads? They're everywhere. Would I stop loading them after I download ten?
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
What about Google Ads? They're everywhere. Would I stop loading them after I download ten?
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Does this blocking actually block the script from running? This could be detrimental to certain advertising industries. The company I work for uses JavaScript hosted on our servers to serve our ads. We don't set a cookie, so we can't track specific people as they browse different sites. We do have tracking pixels, but they track impressions (so we can get paid), not users. FWIW, we do advertising on MSN as a third-party rich media provider, and we're based out of Atlanta :).
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Fantastic features. am a firefox user but looking forward to IE8 specifically for these features.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Is "InPrivate Blocking" only enabled when "InPrivate Browsing" is enabled? Or can you enable "InPrivate Blocking" by itself? Also, have you thought on how this will break sites that use javascript libraries stored in central locations, such as Google's JSAPI (http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/) and AOL's iamalpha (http://dojotoolkit.org/2006/01/31/dojo-iamalpha-and-cdns)? If the InPrivate Blocking is turned on, any sites that use the libraries hosted on those CDN's will be pretty broken.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Why don't you work with the people at Tor? They make a fine plugin for firefox for true private AND anonymous browsing. Why create the wheel?
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Will IE8 PLEASE address the issue of offline browsing? It was removed for some unknown reason. Surely it can be returned - it can be such a useful utility if you are going to be offline.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Who cares for IE? IE is irrelevant these days. Yes, it's still used by many people who are not able to upgrade to a better browser (either because they don't care, have not enough skills or because the company has locked down the OS). Anybody else already uses FF, Safari or Opera or some sibling. And it's easy to see why. E. g. those privacy features are already part of Safari since Version 2. Firefox has plugins with similar functionality. All of them are more standard complient (e.g. Safari 4 beta renders Acid3 without a hitch). All of them have better support for associated technology standards like SVG, PNG, Javascript. None of them has such a clunky interface as IE. All of them are cleary seperated from the OS, so they can be deinstalled and replaced by something else, if the user wishes to do so. Time to drop IE, Microsoft. It's not going to get better ..
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
0 vote Microsoft is planning to add a significant number of privacy enhancements in Internet Explorer 8, including a new private browsing mode called InPrivate. The list of new features addressing privacy concerns is impressive and reflects the growi
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
Is this a ploy to hurt Google's ad business? The features and their description 'sounds' very nice, but the algorithms being used to implement [block third party sites that you came across TEN times? who came up with this number and how?] reek of laziness. I'll wait for FF to implement these features in a better way.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
L'équipe d'IE 8 vient de poster des informations sur les nouvelles fonctions d'IE 8 liées à la confidentialité
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
L'équipe d'IE 8 vient de poster des informations sur les nouvelles fonctions d'IE 8 liées à la confidentialité
Anonymous
August 26, 2008
On your next round of xeroxing features from other browsers, please make sure to copy the "standard compliant render engine" feature.
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
'Off the record' browsing is go Microsoft has outlined the new privacy tools available in its
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
If IE8 adversely affects the economics of the web, e.g. analytics, advertising, or affiliate marketing, then the web will ban IE8. Its as simple as that. You can't change the Internet's business model and expect to survive. You may control the OS, but you don't control the web. Get a f*ing clue.
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
Or the web will start to ban..... analytics, advertising, or affiliate marketing.... This is great news!!!
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
We are talking about a privacy mode that is only in effect should an end user decide to enable it. Safari has a very similar feature and I never heard this kind of reaction to it. I can only conclude that some of these reactions have more to do with Microsoft than the feature itself. Speaking personally, this feature will not induce me to leave Firefox, but I do applaud its inclusion into IE8.
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
Wait a minute, I thought that cookie leashing was in effect for cross-domain scripts/images/etc, meaning that woodgrove-int.com would +not+ be in a position to track the user. Secondly, does "block" after 10 hits mean simply "block the cookie", not "block the content"? I find that more likely.
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
Did you know that the new Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 8 includes some new features to help protect your privacy?
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
We’re excited to release IE8 Beta 2 today for public download. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
digg_url = "http://blogs.msdn.com/pblog/archive/2008/08/27/internet-explorer-8-beta-2-now-available.aspx";digg_title
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
Let it be possible to right click a link and open InPrivate!!!!
Anonymous
August 27, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
Hi, my name is Paul Cutsinger and I’m the Lead Program Manager for the IE8 User Experience. As Dean mentioned
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
I think this really comes down to the fact that people are ignorant of what pixel tracking is. It's really a non issue when considering privacy, and anyone who knows how it works would never confuse it with cookies. Pixels only track your path when browsing through the specific sites they're implemented for. No personal information is passed and no tracking exists between non-related sites. It sounds like the IE8 developers need to learn how the web works before they continue to create "features" for browsing it.
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
This isn't about your privacy on the internet, you dillholes... this is about your privacy on a shared PC. THINK WHACKING MODE.
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
The next beta for Internet Explorer has been released for broad distribution to the public, according
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
Isn't this basically automating what someone with essentially no technical skills could do by themselves and declaring it "new"? That is disgusting. (Although, to be fair, Mozilla seems to be doing this as well. Hopefully, though, they won't be as bad and will say it just automates.) And if I want true anonymity, wouldn't I use Tor or TorK? Konqueror can spoof user-agent strings from a simple menu. And couldn't I, very easily, delete all cookies except for certain sites? I wonder how many of the people posting comments here work for Microsoft, as it seems that Microsoft has no worries about paying people to go onto forums and IRC. I also wonder if Microsoft actually did any of the work for anonymous browsing, or if someone found it on Sourceforge.
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
I just browsed around with IE8 beta 2 and had a very difficult time trying to get things blocked by inPrivate Blocking. I surfed a bunch of sites that use doubleclick and then flipped to inPrivate Browsing and then looked at the list of things that are being blocked by inPrivate blocking. Doubleclick didn't show up at all. So I'm wondering what is the actual criteria that it is testing for. Do the domains have to be exact (so b.a.com and d.a.com would not be considered the same)? Do the file and path have to be the same (so a.com/tracker.js and a.com/new/tracker.js would not be considered the same)?
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
Wow... this should be interesting when it breaks shared hosting of JQuery and other libraries.
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
If everyone is, supposedly, so paranoid about cookies, then why not just provide an option to encrypt them instead of tossing the baby out with the bath water with confusing multi-mode / quasi-private browsing and such? Keep it simple.
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
Just one thing: why not make it possible for the user to choose to make InPrivate the default browsing mode? I may want to be InPrivate all the time, for example. At the moment I have to through several steps: 1) Open a brower 2) shift-ctrl-p 3) go to where I want because instead of going to my home page in InPrivate mode it goes to some page that talks to me about InPrivate which I don't need (certainly not more than once!).
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
Lol, the criticism. I like it, but Microsoft is only trying to create a better browser!
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
How safe is this InPrivate browsing for me as a home/corporate user? Are forensic utilities and procedures able to reveal my browsing habits after enabling InPrivate browsing? I am pretty sure InPrivate option won't be able to remove all the data stored in IE. Or would it?
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
Add InPrivate to the Start menu. Suggestion, Create a folder called IE on the Start menu that contains:

IE (normal mode)
IE (No Add ons)
IE (INPrivate)
IE (Help) Really this takes 10 mins to add to the install routine!!! ty

Anonymous
August 29, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 29, 2008
Hello, thank you for great job. IE looks really nice now. Just one thing, please implemet an option to use InPrivate blocking also in normal browsing mode too.
Anonymous
August 29, 2008
Hi, I'm on Beta2, but InPrivate Blocking is greyed out. I can't figure out why?
Anonymous
August 29, 2008
Figured it out from the post right above mine. It is not available except as part of the wider InPrivate. Love IE8 so far. Thanks!
Anonymous
August 29, 2008
since your own blog uses Webtrends you too are breaking your 10 site rule  <SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript"> var gTrackEvents=0; var gDomain="m.webtrends.com"; var gDcsId="dcsrubpmj00000oqcq95ilr3l_8q8i"; var gFpc="WT_FPC"; if(document.cookie.indexOf(gFpc+"=")==-1){document.write("<SCR"+"IPT TYPE='text/javascript' SRC='"+"http"+(window.location.protocol.indexOf('https:')==0?'s':'')+"://"+gDomain+"/"+gDcsId+"/wtid.js"+"'></SCR"+"IPT>");} </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT SRC="/wt.js" TYPE="text/javascript"></SCRIPT> <NOSCRIPT> <IMG ALT="" BORDER="0" ID="DCSIMG" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" SRC="http://m.webtrends.com/dcsrubpmj00000oqcq95ilr3l_8q8i/njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript&WT.js=No"> </NOSCRIPT> <img src="http://c.microsoft.com/trans_pixel.aspx?TYPE=PV&r=http%3a%2f%2fblogs.msdn.com%2fie%2fdefault.aspx" width="0" height="0" alt="Page view tracker" />
Anonymous
August 29, 2008
All this commotion just because Microsoft effectively rolled Firefox's Adblock and/or NoScript extension into it and made it easy to activate. Guys, these threats were obvious from day one. You can't complain just because it has been made easier for consumers to take advantage of your threats. I'd like to see the same campaign if Firefox included Adblock by default (which I doubt it will). But at the end of the day, should I be more concerned about my relatively small ISP, which is protected by my local laws, or ginormous Google, which is governed by foreign laws (for most people anyway)? The only privacy I'll be getting from this feature is from friends, family and acquaintances. Which is useful, but I'm guessing it isn't what those who read this blog really want privacy from.
Anonymous
August 30, 2008
Hi I installed IE8 on Vista Home Premium. Everything seems to work fine, but I can't get the InPrivate Browsing to start. I followed all the information on the help screen. When I open the tab, I click on theb Start InPrivate Browsing but nothing happens. The InPrivateBlocking menu item in the safety menu is greyed out. Does anyone have a solution, hint, or have the same problem? Thank you for your help. mark
Anonymous
August 30, 2008
What does "Undecided (Allowed)" mean for InPrivate blocking. In the screenshot you show, sites have more than 10 sources, but are not explicitly blocked - what activates automatic blocking?
Anonymous
September 01, 2008
I have installed IE8 on Vista Busines X86, but i don't get Inprivate browsing, it is lways disabled. Vista Business doesn't have parental controls then what is the reason ?? It works fine on Vista Busines X64
Anonymous
September 01, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 02, 2008
Google presented today a comic that described their project for their new browser which will be available
Anonymous
September 02, 2008
Google presented today a comic that described their project for their new browser which will be available
Anonymous
September 03, 2008
how to start IE8 direct inPrivate. from an icon direct into inPrivate, without using strg+umschalt+p
Anonymous
September 03, 2008
how to start IE8 direct inPrivate. from an icon direct into inPrivate, without using strg+umschalt+p
Anonymous
September 03, 2008
Simple add -private to the end of a shortbut for IE8 and it will start as InPrivate. If you want it to start at your homepage instead of the InPrivate autopage write "-private http://live.com" for example to have Live.com as your homepage.
Anonymous
September 04, 2008
This is a great feature, but I'd like an option in IE to always run in InPrivate mode and have the exception/command be to turn it off. The ignorance of what is going on under the covers on the Web has created a massive threat to privacy and we need the browser to let us automatically protect ourselves.
Anonymous
September 04, 2008
Corpo: Olá pessoal, tudo bom? Este post é totalmente off-topic, mas demonstra uma iniciativa minha em
Anonymous
September 05, 2008
My last ISP had a feature where the account holder could log on at the ISP website and view a history of sites visited. In this case, you would be giving people the impression their tracks were covered when in fact they could easily be seen. This could ruin innocent peoples' lives!
Anonymous
September 10, 2008
Hello everyone! One of the features we improved in IE8 is the ‘new tab’ page, which is the page you see
Anonymous
September 11, 2008
Hello everyone! One of the features we improved in IE8 is the ‘new tab’ page, which is the page you see
Anonymous
September 12, 2008
As more and more users awaken to the fact that their every step on the net can be traced, browser developers have started to incorporate private browsing modes into their products. Google Chrome has an 'Incognito' mode, Safari has 'Private Browsing,'
Anonymous
September 22, 2008
Hi, my name is Jatinder Mann and I work on the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) and Group
Anonymous
January 15, 2009
Internet Explorer Browser User-Agent String Problem
Anonymous
January 28, 2009
Since the release of Internet Explorer 8 beta 2, we’ve listened, watched and learned a lot about how
Anonymous
February 05, 2009
The IE8 feature Suggested Sites helps you discover related sites that can be helpful to get more information
Anonymous
February 11, 2009
Защита от C lick J acking-атак в IE8 В связи с разработкой Internet Explorer 8 наша команда разработчиков,
Anonymous
February 15, 2009
I have to admit, so far I'm not a big fan of Internet Explorer 8, the next version of Microsoft's Web browser. I think it lives up to most of the complaints about the previous versions of IE - slow,...
Anonymous
February 15, 2009
В связи с разработкой Internet Explorer 8 наша команда разработчиков, занимающихся вопросами безопасности,
Anonymous
February 15, 2009
В связи с разработкой Internet Explorer 8 наша команда разработчиков, занимающихся вопросами безопасности,
Anonymous
February 23, 2009
Internet Explorer Browser User-Agent String Problem
Anonymous
February 24, 2009
Internet Explorer Browser User-Agent String Problem
Anonymous
February 26, 2009
이 글은 Internet Explorer 개발 팀 블로그 (영어)의 번역 문서입니다. 이 글에 포함된 정보는 Internet Explorer 개발 팀 블로그 (영어)가 생성된 시점의
Anonymous
March 06, 2009
In this installment of our Privacy Solutions Series, we'll be taking a look at the privacy-related features in the most popular browser in use today, Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Specifically, we'll be examining the most recent version of the browser,
Anonymous
March 12, 2009
Рекомендуемые сайты и конфиденциальность Функция IE8 под названием Рекомендуемые сайты (в оригинале Suggested
Anonymous
March 24, 2009
Mit dem Erscheinen des Internet Explorer 8 befindet sich der Microsoft-Browser erstmals wieder auf Augenh�he mit der Konkurrenz. Der InPrivate-Modus zum Schutz der Privatsph�re gilt als herausragende Funktion. F�r Webdesigner ist vor allem die verbesserte
Anonymous
May 11, 2009
Hi again! I’m Helen Drislane, a Program Manager on the IE team and I will be discussing how IE integrates
Anonymous
May 20, 2009
IE8 в Windows 7: новая панель задач Добрый день! Меня зовут Хелен Дрислейн (Helen Drislane) и я являюсь
Anonymous
June 16, 2009
Another question from the audience today: Q: I like IE8's InPrivate Browsing feature , but I'm worried

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