Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

8675309 — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:52:45 GMT

it also sometimes happens on vista aswell but not that often

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

8675309 — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 22:20:45 GMT

the only add on that i could think of causing trouble is flash or after reading blogs.msdn.com/.../add-on-performance-part-1-measuring-add-on-performance.aspx it could also be avg safe search

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

EricLaw [MSFT] — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:14:19 GMT

8675309: The prompt about restoring your session indicates that one of your add-ons is hanging or crashing on shutdown. As for the fact that your session cookies are preserved, this can also be a symptom of such a hang, because the "zombie" process keeps the session alive. blogs.msdn.com/.../session-cookies-sessionstorage-and-ie8.aspx

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

8675309 — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:21:26 GMT

i have an interesting thing i found out. in ie windows 7 if you click an internet shortcut thats on the desk. it will open after done browsing i close the window then open a new 1 with the start menu internet icon it asks if i'd like to restore my session sometimes or it remembers cookies from previous session eventhough its not supposed to. so why does it do that?

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

Firefox Fangirl — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:18:11 GMT

@ What

It's been mentioned several times elsewhere on this very blog, but you actually can turn on InPrivate Filtering on by default. It's pretty easy actually:

1. Launch Regedit.exe and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Internet Explorer \ Safety \ PrivacIE

2. Create a new DWORD value named StartMode

3. Double-click StartMode, click the text form and enter 1.

Enabling this by default would break a ton of sites though, as shared scripts are used across an increasingly entangled web to deliver content. I've also seen people import .xml files with the list from Adblock Plus to give IE 8 adblock functionality, although there isn't a way to auto update the list...

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

Lets be honest — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:32:24 GMT

Lets at least be honest - the whole purpose of InPrivate mode is as they say: Pr0nMode the ability to surf porn without leaving traces for others to realize you 45min looking at omg, isThatReal, areYouSerious, ewwwThatsGross, whoSeriouslyDoesThatLikeThat?

For the most part the feature works just fine the only flaws are with saved video files due to the Windows Media Player Bug. (PS *** surfers - if you viewed a video in WMP after IE was closed, IE will track that you watched that video (even if you delete the video!) )

For everything else (checking your gmail on a friends PC) its fine because you will log out when done... the fact that you checked your email is irrelevant.

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

CS — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:56:26 GMT

I lost a lot of respect for your comment after reading it. You failed to identify any actual problem and point generically to the poor reporting from the mainstream media that something's amiss.

Don't you find it a bit suspicious that the primary source they cited was a disgruntled MS executive who got fired?

This post (and the comments) plainly explain how simply it is to turn on InPrivate Filtering (it's a regkey, for crying out loud) permanently if you're too lazy to click the icon once in a while. Of course, when you find that the feature breaks sites you care about, then you'll turn it off and find that the IE default behavior suddenly makes a lot more sense.

Think. Then post.

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

SC — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:46:11 GMT

I lost a lot of respect for this blog after reading this post. What a load of complete nonsense "Users are in control of several privacy protection features in IE" - actually, they aren't, as pointed out by the many news articles that surfaced over the weekend.

Has this turned into a politician's blog? Did you even write this, or did your legal team/upper management do so? I love how you completely change the topic at the end "but we're good at security!" which has nothing to do with the issue at hand - the fact InPrivate Filtering was neutered by your upper management.

Don't waste our time with nonsense like this.

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

Cbhacking — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 21:25:59 GMT

@Aeroz (and other asking about spell checking, ad blocking, etc.)

There's a pretty sweet add-on available for IE, from http://ie7pro.com. Despite the name, it works on IE6 through 8, though you'll want to change a couple of settings on 8 since they concern features already built-in*. It provides everything from spell checking to ad blocking to a download manager, plus handy features like a user-agent switcher, fast proxy switcher, the ability to change the default View Source program (although IE8's is decent), the ability to highlight a URL and go straight there, the ability to always have the search box open its results in a new tab... so many features. A few that I don't use much but that some people will love: mouse gestures, GreaseMonkey-like custom scripts, URL aliases, prefetching... seriously, it's an almost frightening amount of customizability.

Also, IE8 already has an add-on repository; Tools -> Manage Add-ons -> Find more toolbars and extensions (link at bottom of window). It's nowhere near as large as Firefox's, but it gets the job done.

* Specifically, you can turn off the IE7Pro search-as-you-type bar, which 8 has, and you should remove or change the Ctrl+Shift+T shortcut for Duplicate Tab; IE8 has built in tab duplication that works better, and uses that shortcut for Re-open Closed Tab which it also implements better than IE7Pro does)

re: Online privacy, Tracking, and IE8’s InPrivate Filtering

Blair — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:36:19 GMT

IE8 InPrivate mode filtering is not a complete solution for privacy. It has been mentioned and proven several times that IE has history issues outside of regular IE browsing as it shares its "history" with the operating system. Until the IE Team has sorted out the various privacy breaches with Windows Exploring and Windows Media Player - please stop posting that using IE8 InPrivate Mode ensures that no private information is leaked as that is currently a proven fallacy.