Welcome to 2023 where generative AI is all the rage and Microsoft’s web browser is built on Chromium. What a crazy time to live in. Am I right? Seriously though, Microsoft’s Edge browser is the third largest browser by market share behind Safari and Google’s own Chrome. Three years ago, Microsoft overhauled Edge and rebuilt it from the ground up using Chromium as its foundation. For that reason, Edge and Chrome have many features in common and that’s a good thing.
As both companies developer their browsers in the Chromium repository, both browsers can benefit by gaining new features as well as identifying bugs and security issues that may have been previously unexposed. It’s a win-win for Google, Microsoft, and all of the Chrome and Edge users out there. While similar in many ways, each browser has its own unique set of features and occasionally, these isolated features can become an Achilles heel. Unfortunately for Microsoft, one such feature has created a bit of a monster for Edge and its users.
To be clear, this is not an article bashing Microsoft or the Edge browser. On the contrary, this is a public service announcement. Much in the same way we report of Chrome vulnerabilities and other issues, this is to make you aware of an unintended “thing” that recently started happening in the latest version of the Edge browser. There’s enough room for all of us in this big old world and I’m rooting for all of us to make it. Edge is built on Chromium and I’m sure that we have a fair amount of readers that use Microsoft’s browser on a regular basis. Therefore, I am obliged to inform you of this not so little issue that has reared its head.
Edge to Bing
If you’re a Chrome mobile user, you may be familiar with the “follow” feature that allows you to add sites to your follow list that will then appear alongside your Chrome discover feed. Never heard of it? You should try it. It’s awesome. Anyway, that feature is currently only on the mobile version of Chrome despite work being done to bring it to the desktop browser.
The Edge desktop browser also has a “follow” feature but its intent is slightly different than that of Chrome. This feature is meant to let users follow select creators that exist within a certain set of parameters. These would include YouTube channels, social media creator pages, and a smaller set of blog style news sites. Cool feature but there’s one little problem. A Reddit user unearthed some information that showed that this follow feature was passing the URL of nearly every website they visited directly to Bing. More specifically the URL bingapis.com. With the exception of a few, blacklisted sites, every single URL visited was being passed along for reasons unknown.
Now, Microsoft has acknowledged this issue and is reporting that it is an unintended bug in the feature that was not anticipated. According to a report from The Verge, a representative from Microsoft stated that “are investigating and will take appropriate action to address any issues.” Little else was shared apart from that and no one is talking about why the URLs are being sent to the Bing API in the first place.
More alarming is the fact that this feature appears to be enabled by default which means that all of your browsing history may be getting forwarded to Bing in some shape, form or fashion. Thankfully, there’s a way to prevent this while Microsoft puts together a patch, fix or update to address the issue. To disable the Follow Creator feature, head to Settings and select Privacy, Search and Services. From there, scroll down to services and toggle the Show suggestions to follow creators in Microsoft Edge option. From there, you’ll just need to wait for an update before re-enabling the feature. I will update this post when we hear something from Microsoft on the status of this bug.
Source: Reddit via The Verge
