Users are increasingly concerned about our privacy. Every time we surf the Internet, we leave a digital trail. Companies, governments and Internet providers often collect our data and create a profile of us. Trackers, cookies and more are used to carry out this task. For this reason, VPNs are becoming very popular to achieve greater privacy. One of the browsers that we can use is Microsoft Edge, which in this case is the cause of this controversy. In this article we are going to see how the Edge browser could be sending your search results to Microsoft and how we can solve it.
Edge submits your searches to Microsoft
Edge, Microsoft’s browser, may be sending search results that run in the browser to Microsoft by default. In this case, it should be noted that this function is not limited only to the Bing search engine. Therefore, if this section of the configuration is enabled, it will inform Microsoft about the searches in all the engines. Obviously, Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo! and others that Edge users do.
These cases affect us when we use Microsoft Edge in one of these ways:
- It is our main browser.
- We use it as a secondary one.
- Also when using the default browser to open certain links on the system.
If we are in one of these situations, we may want to check your browser settings to see if your search results are being sent to Microsoft. The change happens when you open the Microsoft Edge browser and at that moment it shows you a pop-up window like this:
It asks us if we can help Microsoft improve Microsoft products and services, for which the results of the searches carried out in the browser will be collected. In addition, it adds that this data that Microsoft collects is never associated with the user or the device. In theory this information is reassuring but there are some clauses that you do not know to what extent they can affect your privacy. You may be interested in how to avoid the crash when downloading files with Edge.
What they can collect about us
We already know that if we have a box enabled in the Edge configuration, the results of your searches will be sent to Microsoft. Now is the time to find out exactly what information you can save. In this regard, Microsoft can collect:
- The search term we have done.
- The search results that have appeared to us.
- How we interact with search results. The links we click on would be included here.
- Demographic data.
Microsoft explicitly lists this data, although some more could be collected. As for the purpose of performing this action is to improve the user experience in Edge, Bing, Microsoft News and other services of the company as indicated in the poster above.
Microsoft comments that it removes and de-identifies the data by removing the identifying data of the person or device from which that data was extracted. It also adds that this data is not used to receive advertising oriented to our tastes. It can also be interesting to protect your Microsoft account with two-factor authentication.
How to prevent it from collecting searches
It has been found, after a review of the Edge configuration, that the option that we are going to talk about next was previously deactivated. The option in particular is called Help improve Microsoft products by submitting optional diagnostic data on your use of the browser . We will find this option in settings in the privacy section.
Now let’s see if the results of your searches are being sent to Microsoft by following these steps. First we run the Microsoft Edge browser. Then in the address bar we have to write the following and press enter:
edge://settings/privacy#searchServiceImprovement
The next step we have to take is to deactivate Help improve Microsoft products by sending optional diagnostic data about the use of the browser . This is an example after disabling it.
Microsoft and many other browser developers are making changes to the configuration of your browser and we must be vigilant if we do not want it to affect our privacy.
