We often confuse the incognito, or private, mode of browsers with browsing anonymously and with privacy. Far from reality, what these modes do is basically allow us to navigate without session cookies and without saving the sites we visit in the history. But they have no functions or features that really allow us to protect our privacy. Especially Google Chrome, who records absolutely everything we do. However, this may change soon, as Edge Chromium, Microsoft‘s new browser, is working on a new InPrivate mode that, now, will respect our privacy a little more.
The new Edge offers users different levels of privacy when surfing the web. These modes, called ” tracking prevention “, can be found within the browser settings. These allow us to choose the unwanted elements of the websites that we want to block when we browse the Internet.
Until now, when we were browsing in private mode, the same settings were used as in normal mode. However, Microsoft knows that when a user opens this window to browse they look for an extra privacy. And to give you this privacy, the company has added a new option that will allow us to set the tracking prevention mode to “strict” automatically whenever we open an InPrivate window in the browser.
How Edge’s InPrivate Mode Protects Us
Edge’s InPrivate mode , like any incognito mode of other browsers, does not allow us to surf anonymously and privately on the Internet. Broadly speaking, what it does is prevent the cookies from the normal session from being used to identify us, nor does it save the information of what we do in this way (visited websites, downloads, cookies, etc.) since they are deleted when the window is closed . But our identity is equally exposed , and any website can identify us and follow us through the websites.
It is true that Edge’s InPrivate mode has some privacy “extras”. For example, it offers us the possibility to search through Bing instead of doing it through Google , which always gives us more privacy. But it’s not enough. For this reason, Microsoft has wanted to reinforce this mode by offering users the possibility to always navigate with the strict monitoring prevention mode.
Always use “Strict” tracking prevention
Within the privacy settings of Edge in Windows 10, or when opening InPrivate mode, we can find a switch that will allow us to activate the strict tracking prevention mode to greatly improve our privacy when browsing in this way.
The “Strict” tracking prevention mode allows us to block most tracking trackers from virtually every site we visit, as well as blocking potentially dangerous trackers. Of course, in exchange for this advanced privacy, the browser warns us that we will stop seeing personalized advertising. Some websites may also not function properly.
Of course, the InPrivate mode of Edge reminds us that it does not allow us to hide what we are looking for in our school or company, or for the Internet provider. It also doesn’t offer additional tracking protection or add additional protection.
This new function is now available within the Canary branch of the browser . Users of the stable version will receive it later, probably with the next browser update.
