Security/Privacy: How safe are you while you browse web?

Do you know the new feature “Tracking Protection” of Internet Explorer? It is the new privacy feature in Internet Explorer 9 designed to help keep third-party websites from tracking your Web behavior. With Tracking Protection, consumers can filter content in a page that may have an impact on privacy. Here you see a stock ticker, links for social sharing, videos, advertisements and single pixel images used for tracking page usage by third parties.

Why you need Tracking Protection in IE9? It puts people in control of what data is being shared as they move around the Web. It does this by enabling consumers to indicate what websites they’d prefer to not exchange information with. Consumers do this by adding Tracking Protection Lists to Internet Explorer. Anyone, and any organization, on the Web can author and publish Tracking Protection Lists. Consumers can install more than one. By default, there are no lists included in IE9, which is consistent with our previous IE releases with respect to privacy.

These lists include Web addresses for IE to treat as “Do Not Call” unless the consumer visits the address directly. The lists also include “OK to Call” addresses to make sure that the user can get to these addresses even if one of their lists has it as “Do Not Call.” Once the consumer has turned on Tracking Protection, it remains on until the person turns it off.

Again, it’s worth noting that consumers have to turn on Tracking Protection and that by default IE9’s privacy protections are similar to IE8’s.