
Researchers say MS Edge's telemetry has worst privacy of any major browser - based2
https://winbuzzer.com/2020/03/17/researchers-say-microsoft-edges-telemetry-has-the-worst-privacy-of-any-major-browser-xcxwbn/
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jacquesm
Worse than Chrome? That must have taken some doing then.

Ah, here is the key in the article:

"Notably, the study did not look at the web services provided by each of the
companies, which also included Google, Apple, Brave, Mozilla. The focus was on
the browsers themselves, rather than the ecosystem as a whole, which shows
only one important part of the puzzle."

That explains it. Is Brave even 'Major'?

~~~
Spooky23
It’s en vogue to complain about Google, but the stream of data flowing into
Microsoft is incredible and who knows if or how it is being used.

They have better competitive intelligence capability than any other company.
Microsoft knows the org chart of millions of companies better than they do,
knows who talks to who both in email and voice in some orgs, and knows where
people work and where they move at work.

The telemetry sent up for Windows and Office is pretty comprehensive and
invasive as well.

I wonder what they do with it. I see no evidence of improved product quality.

~~~
clairity
complaining about google is nothing like the whims of fashion. google is a
legitimate threat to privacy and liberty, and that should be laid bare
repeatedly so we don't get complacent and forget.

facebook as well, to a slightly lesser extent. microsoft is trying to compete
on that front (poorly) and should also be called out.

it's not an either-or proposition, but an all-of-the-above one.

~~~
rixed
You forgot to say why Google would be a bigger threat than Microsoft, which is
annoying given the person you are responding to clearly listed the reasons why
Microsoft is actually collecting more informations than Google.

Also, Microsoft has a much worse historical record than Google regarding
protecting their users. For instance, at a time when Microsoft was happyly
complying to every rules required to be allowed to do business in China,
Google decided to not comply and close its offices in that country, all in the
name of privacy.

So yes, bashing Google in the comment section of an article about Microsoft
Edge misbehavior certainly sounds like the whims of fashion, if not of
organised business propaganda.

edit: beating Android keyboard to oblivion

~~~
sjwright
> You forgot to say why Google would be a bigger threat than Microsoft

Microsoft wants you to use their spreadsheet software.

Google is a significant gatekeeper to information which influences what we
know and the opinions we form. And that information is increasingly first
party, e.g. YouTube, the Play Store.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> Microsoft wants you to use their spreadsheet software.

... and windows OS, visual studio, sql server, azure, linkedin, github, bing,
skype, etc which all collects data on you. Also, I love that you dismissed
their office suite as just "spreadsheet software". It's only the world's
ubiquitous office suite used everywhere in the world.

~~~
nothrabannosir
The idea behind that comment seems to have been: "MS has a known motive: they
want to sell you software and make money. This is a business model I
understand, and can deal with being on the other end of." The same argument is
used in iOS vs Android debates: why isn't it the same shit, different smell?
Because Apple sells you hardware, and Google sells You.

The glib terseness of the comment is a metaphor for the relative harmlessness
of the business model. Not indicative of the actual product selection or
annual revenue.

I think, anyway...?

~~~
dntbnmpls
> MS has a known motive: they want to sell you software and make money.

And the idea behind my comment was : They also want to sell you. Bing,
linkedin, github, etc aren't selling you software. Also, windows OS has ads
now.

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-
window...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-
windows-10-ads-taskbar-file-explorer)

> Because Apple sells you hardware, and Google sells You.

Apple also sells you. They sell you to music, movie, etc industry in order for
the industry to support apple's platform.

> The glib terseness of the comment is a metaphor for the relative
> harmlessness of the business model.

Which I showed was wrong.

It's insane the amount of microsoft and apple support on a tech platform. I
guess all the money that microsoft/gates spent on PR truly worked.

> I think, anyway...?

I don't think you thought things through too well... Your argument was
basically google sells chromebook/hardware so everything else they do is fine.

~~~
sjwright
> Apple also sells you.

By that logic, a shopping mall “sells you” to retail stores. A cinema “sells
you” to movie studios. Etc.

~~~
dntbnmpls
Only those shopping malls and cinema chains that get you to sign up for
something and get your info and have tracking capability. What do you think
AMC Stubs A-List program is about?

Apple is worse than AMC or shopping malls since they have much more
identifiable data on you ( even more than google in many respects ) and use
that to sell you. Not just your data but recommendations/etc.

Apple sells you in the same way google/facebook/microsoft/etc sells you.
Collectively and individually.

In the past shopping malls and cinemas used to sell you collectively to retail
stores and movie studios. Now many of them can sell you individually to retail
stores and movie studios. Something really has gone wrong when there is
support for Apple on a tech forum. Usually apple just preys upon non-tech
people who like overpriced shiny things. It's strange the amount of "support"
apple and microsoft gets nowadays.

~~~
sjwright
Oh, I didn't realise you're just spinning conspiracy theories. If any of that
were true, we'd know about it. There would be leaks from employees of the
companies who are receiving this data from Apple.

------
Sephr
There is something much more concerning that nobody is mentioning:

Microsoft Edge removed encrypted sync. This sync data can include all of your
browser history, which is arguably a much more serious privacy violation.

Chrome allows you to set a separate encryption passphrase for syncing your
preferences & history to Google's servers. Edge does not allow this.

~~~
modeless
This feature (end-to-end encrypted sync) is huge for privacy, and nobody knows
about it. It's never mentioned when people talk about privacy issues in
browsers. It seems like people don't actually care to do slightly inconvenient
things that will improve their privacy, they just like to be outraged about it
on the internet.

------
alister
> _Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, meanwhile, tag requests with identifiers, but
> that information is reset when the browser is re-installed. All send details
> of the webpages visited to the backend via auto-complete, but with verifying
> identifiers. Chrome is, in this case, are persistent, while Safari’s are
> ephemeral and Mozilla doesn’t have identifiers at all._

First it says, _Firefox tags with identifiers_ , then it says, _Mozilla
[Firefox] doesn’t have identifiers at all_. What explains this apparent
contradiction?

~~~
officialjunk
to me it seems they may think firefox and mozilla are two different things.

~~~
Roboprog
Or perhaps Brave was supposed to be one of those items?

Clearly, the article needed editorial proof reading in a few spots.

------
dang
The paper is here:
[https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf](https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf).
Should we change the URL to it above?

The comments are pretty tied to the claims of the current article at this
point.

------
kojoru
Note there's Microsoft's reply here:
[https://winbuzzer.com/2020/03/20/microsoft-responds-to-
resea...](https://winbuzzer.com/2020/03/20/microsoft-responds-to-researchers-
claim-that-edge-is-the-worst-for-privacy-xcxwbn/)

Apparently this hardware identifier is used to be able to comply with gdpr
data deletion requests.

~~~
gentleman11
Nonsense. You have to track people in order to know that you are not tracking
some people?

------
thekyle
I don't understand Microsoft's angle with all of their telemetry in products
like Windows, VS Code, Edge, etc.

Microsoft's biggest businesses are;

* Azure

* Software licensing fees (Windows/Office/etc)

* Gaming stuff (XBox, etc)

None of these benefit from having tons of data on their customers. Some of
them might even lose sales because of it (do enterprises want their data
sucked up into the cloud when using Office or Windows).

Bing Ads make up such a small amount of Microsoft's income that they're pretty
much irrelevant.

It seems to me that the rational thing would be to take the Apple approach.
Use privacy as a feature that Google can't copy. Take advantage of the fact
that one of their biggest competitors is mostly funded by targeted advertising
and go where they cannot.

Since Microsoft is not doing that, and they're not stupid I must assume that I
am missing something.

~~~
ngold
What a world we could live in if Microsoft was a privacy champion. It would
make a massive amount of fans.

------
heartbeats
Title is not ideal - suggest change to "Researchers say MS Edge's telemetry
has worst privacy among major browsers"

~~~
dang
We've changed it above.

------
based2
[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/fmydx0/research...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/fmydx0/researchers_say_microsoft_edges_telemetry_has_the/)

~~~
lucb1e
I'm guessing you want to point out the top comment?

Reddit user CobraCabana wrote:

> This article isn’t about the telemetry data it’s about the identifiers.

> Edge sends over a unique identifier for the hardware

> Chrome and safari send one based on installation instance. Chrome persists
> the identifier safari doesn’t

> Firefox doesn’t send any identifier.

------
bdcravens
Site posts article about browser privacy while asking if they can send you
notifications.

~~~
glenneroo
At least they ask.

------
ryanmarsh
It just makes up for their lack of a major search engine. I'm pretty sure it's
safe to say Google knows more about you than Microsoft.

------
5cott0
I'm starting to think Google PR's favorite channel is the editorial content
advertisement.

------
seemslegit
In Microsofts defense - this could simply be due to the authors inability to
address the multitude of different data exfiltration surfaces in FF and Chrome

------
what-the-grump
Am I missing something or the paper is not linked? Or are my ad-blockers
blocking something on the page.

Also, how are the virtualized tabs tracked?

------
blibble
the company behind the ad and spyware infested Windows 10 continued that abuse
with their new browser?

I'm surprised, I really am

------
justlexi93
And I need to remind you that we’re talking about Out the Box here, not with
add ins and extensions. Brave is capable of installing any extension found in
the Chrome web apps page so you probably could tweak it further.

------
JMTQp8lwXL
Why does this article keep resurfacing everywhere? I've seen it on
/r/technology multiple times. I refuse to believe it. Chrome has to have the
most telemetry: it is produced by an ad company after all. Of all
organizations maintaining major browsers, Google is the most incentivized to
collect data. Follow the money.

~~~
AlexMax
I don't necessarily agree with your argument - I think it's a perfectly
reasonable conclusion that either Microsoft and Google could have worse
telemetry in their browser.

That said, I noticed the strange behavior around this article as well. I've
seen it pop up multiple times in various content aggregators, and the
/r/technology mods even removed the post that I happened to notice and comment
in.

I'm not sure why, it seemed like a completely reasonable article on its face.
But maybe there's something underhanded going on behind the scenes?

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Google's primary business is telemetry: I'd be shocked if they were worse at
it than Microsoft. But I'm willing to accept you might disagree with this
point.

Regarding the second point: And I think we agree here, the article is odd. It
definitely seems like there's an anti-Edge narrative trying to achieve
mindshare.

I should have decoupled my original comment, and only discussed the
circulation of the article, as that's more concerning.

~~~
enos_feedler
Google’s primary business is telemetry? Explain!

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
A means to an end for serving relevant ads, their bread and butter.

~~~
scarejunba
Their bread and butter is search ads, my dude. They don't need telemetry for
that. They have search keywords. Almost all of their revenue comes from there
and the margin there is huge.

~~~
Terretta
What source suggests Google’s AdWords ads distributed across the entire web
(all the AdWords sites that aren’t SERPs) don’t leverage telemetry and don’t
drive meaningful revenue?

------
halyconWays
The worst telemetry of any major browser _so far_ , son.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Since most researchers are unable to see the future, it's generally accepted
that such studies are done on the present and/or past.

~~~
halyconWays
Because it's not possible to see that every version of Windows has invaded
your privacy more than every previous version, nor is it possible to
extrapolate that they're going to continue down this path unless something
stops them.

