Friday, April 29th 2022
Microsoft May be Adding an Integrated VPN to Edge Browser
Microsoft is seemingly looking to add an integrated VPN (Virtual Private Network) to its Edge browser. A company blog post details the new Microsoft Edge Secure Network feature, which was developed in partnership with internet services provider Cloudflare. The feature will be initially deployed in Preview form, and isn't currently available in Canary and Dev releases of the browser.
According to Microsoft, Secure Network for Edge aims to increase users' security as they browse through unprotected - or less-than-ideally-protected - networks. In a day and age where hacking (in its various forms) is a daily occurrence, the company aims to help Edge users access the World Wide Web through what it describes as an encrypted, secure network. And if the partnership with Cloudflare pricked your ears at possible data collection issues, you can apparently rest assured: Cloudflare says it will only keep the required diagnostic and support data for a period of 25 hours after the last log-off. Do remember that the Edge sign-in requirement means that more of your data will be made available to Microsoft. But considering the added security and ease of use of a browser-embedded VPN and the increased privacy from all other data collection agents, most users will likely feature a net gain in privacy.
Other browsers, such as Opera, already integrate a VPN, and there are a number of extension-based alternatives for Chromium-based browsers. Microsoft's Edge Secure Network feature will be integrated into the browser, and users who sign-in to their Microsoft account on Edge can count on a "freeish" approach to billing. Microsoft says up to 1 GB of Internet traffic will be available for all users - thus standing to reason that additional traffic will be billed. That'll still likely be enough for users who want to conduct more sensitive internet operations like home-banking, but is a laughable amount for most internet usage patterns. Microsoft didn't announce pricing for the feature
Sources:
Microsoft, via The Register
According to Microsoft, Secure Network for Edge aims to increase users' security as they browse through unprotected - or less-than-ideally-protected - networks. In a day and age where hacking (in its various forms) is a daily occurrence, the company aims to help Edge users access the World Wide Web through what it describes as an encrypted, secure network. And if the partnership with Cloudflare pricked your ears at possible data collection issues, you can apparently rest assured: Cloudflare says it will only keep the required diagnostic and support data for a period of 25 hours after the last log-off. Do remember that the Edge sign-in requirement means that more of your data will be made available to Microsoft. But considering the added security and ease of use of a browser-embedded VPN and the increased privacy from all other data collection agents, most users will likely feature a net gain in privacy.
71 Comments on Microsoft May be Adding an Integrated VPN to Edge Browser
Been using Firefox since 2004 and I'll keep using it.
I find it odd that Firefox these days contacts AWS every time you start it up. Seems like you can turn as much of the options of but yet it will ways do so.
Assuming that this is the cases, Mozilla has a similar feature being tested: Firefox Private Network. Neither will have what you're looking for, unfortunately. You'll have to pay up for a standalone service (Mozilla has one, btw), or risk it with free ones (VPNGate+OpenVPN combo?).This you, bro?
Seriously though, there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong or hypocritical in criticising a product while using it.
If we unlucky this VPN feature will harvest data in addition to the above.
Yet another fake privacy feature to give users a false sense of safety, even if we ignore the fact that's made by cuckflare this is as useless as the Tor window in Brave Browser, yes telemetry can be blocked -to an extent- but at the end of the day for normie users it won't make any difference at all, why? because they'll be doing exactly the same with or without a VPN.
I've had more than one heated debate about privacy and opsec before and I stand my ground saying it doesn't matters how much VPNs and proxies you use behind a pfSense box built with top of the line hardware if you still access sites like Facebook, gmail or have a smartphone and use Whatspy to chat, it all comes down to the amount of data YOU share and how YOU use the internet. It also comes down to who you talk to about whatever you consider private, say you want to throw a birthday party for your sister and tell a bunch of friends (3) via riseup mail and you and all of them use claws as client with all the proper keys, certs and so on installed, but one of your friends wants to invite someone else to the party, this other person is a complete tech-illiterate so your friend grabs his smartphone and sents the other person a whatsapp message to let them know about the party. Now the person but also the lizard robot's company, every agency in the world, amazon, google, the chinese and basically every advertising company in the world knows you're throwing a birthday party for your sister, congratulations, you played yourself.
This is a pretty simple example of possible flaws in opsec, imagine if the message you were sending was about uncovering crimes against humanity commited by certain mercenaries in certain warzone, it's so sad you suddenly decided to "commit suicide" after this... hehWell, you could call it that, but it's simply a low security proxy that tracks users.
Ever get an Email and see your name in the title? Using 3-4 (using 3 for example) pieces of data from one source ("take our survey for $5 gift card"), say Age, Location (*broad like state), relationship status. Another source ( Sign up for our newsletter!)submits IP, location, and shoe size. and still another source (lets trustworthy etailers) submits Location, Email, and shoe size. Separately, it means nothing, together, and it starts to build a profile. Query email, and if you use your name, just first name, and the profile grows. Now add Googles anonymized data, not exactly sure what form they use {I suspect list form (individual data) or else they cant use focused advertising}, nothing new but confirms other data already collected. Now you have focused advertising sent to your browser with the title "hey <your name> look at this brand new shiney!".
like @caroline! posted, its basically the same, various methods are all used.
I could go on, but the NFL draft is on..
Even though targeted ads bring tons of money, there are far more sinister intentions with this data.
its nothing truly sinister, really it snot :evileye: .
But that's a big 'if'. Hardly more than 5-10% of all internet users know or care how their data is gathered and processed. For the time being big companies will continue making big money from people's private data.
Cloudflare doesn’t sell data, doesn’t write user identifiable info to disk, and deletes all diagnostic data after 25 hours
TMYK