Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser is an excellent option for many reasons, but the privacy-conscious might be a little frustrated with a recent discovery. Currently, Microsoft Edge is leaking all of the websites you visit to Bing, but you can turn it off.
This week a Reddit user spotted that Microsoft’s Edge browser has been sending all visited URLs to “bingapis.com.” When users visit a URL on their browser, that data is sent to Bing for nearly all URLs. While there appears to be nothing malicious going on here, the issue has privacy implications as there’s no disclosure this is happening and it is enabled by default.
The Verge has since confirmed the issue with a software engineer, and found the cause.
Microsoft Edge recently rolled out a new “follow” feature for helping users to keep track of creators, whether that’s a website like 9to5Google, a YouTube channel, or someone on social media, such as Reddit. As a part of that feature, Edge sends that URL to the Bing API, but for reasons unclear. The engineer, Rafael Rivera, explains that the reason the feature is sending all URLs you visit to Bing is because it is not working correctly, with The Verge adding that it is “poorly implemented.”
In a statement, Microsoft confirmed that it is aware of these reports and that the company will take “appropriate action to address any issues,” but offered no explanation of why this is happening.
Luckily, in the meantime, turning off the “follow” feature stops this action. This can be done through Settings > Privacy, Search, and Services > Services and clicking the toggle on “Show suggestions to follow creators in Microsoft Edge.”
More on Edge & Bing:
- Microsoft Edge is adding better blocking of autoplay videos and media
- SwiftKey adds Bing’s ChatGPT AI on Android – Here’s what it can do
- Microsoft is bringing Image Creator to the new Bing to generate images from text prompts
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