Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge now only grabs data from other browsers when you give it permission

Ben Schoon | Feb 19 2024 - 7:48 am PT

Recently Microsoft Edge was caught sneakily grabbing data from Google Chrome and other browsers following Windows updates, but there was also an apparent glitch going on where Edge would grab that data even if you didn’t give it permission. Now, that bug has supposedly been fixed.

For the past couple of years, Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser has had support for pulling data from other browsers (focused on Chrome) to keep Edge up to date if you used it. The feature has been pushed pretty aggressively as of late, with Windows updates showing a prompt that cannot be closed which tries to get your permission to do this.

However, for some, that update wasn’t the cause of Edge copying data from Chrome.

A glitch within Edge would activate this feature for some users without their permission, which led to a lot of confusion on how Edge was getting this data. In a recent changelog for the latest stable version of Edge, Microsoft says (in a roundabout way) that this issue has been fixed.

Edge has a feature that provides an option to import browser data on each launch from other browsers with user consent. This feature’s state might not have been syncing and displaying correctly across multiple devices. This is fixed.

So, now, Microsoft Edge should only be importing browser data from Google Chrome and other browsers when you give it permission to do so. This isn’t to say that Microsoft won’t be sneaky about trying to get that permission, but at the very least, Edge won’t do it on its own.