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
I'm far too gone for the corporations to lure me in with dumb ads or gift cards, I've never bought anything online, like I don't even have a card to do so, if I do have a profile anyway it must be terrible compared to the ordinary jane. Something I know is that the future sucks, at least for someone like me, it's gonna get worse once cash is gone, some underground markets could pop up but they'll be highly illegal for sure and I'll become nothing less than a criminal for not wanting to be under surveillance 24/7, yay... at this rate the clearnet as I -or we- know it will also be gone in I dare to say less than a decade from now, things like the OSB will eventually be imposed at a worldwide scale, Musk wanting to "fight spam bots" in Twitter is just another way of saying he wants accounts to be tied to real names, addresses, bank accounts, everything, there won't be a way to be part of social media without handing over your real data, right now you can't join places like Twitter or Facebook without a phone number so it'll be that in steroids.
That being the tip of the iceberg, but right now anything more I could say could be treated as a "conspiracy theory", it'll start to make sense in the years to come though, I believe anyone who knows tech also knows where we're heading, that place being a magnificent utopia with wonderful tech or a hellish corporate totalitarianist dystopia that hunts you down to death depends on what you're willing to give up to be part of the new net and digital world. But, who knows, maybe we destroy the world and create a nuclear winter before that happens, nothing's written in stone they say.
The VPN using cloudflares DNS will solve a lot of issues with shite ISP's and their DNS servers, and prevent a lot of malware (since cloudflare can block specific things at their end)
How far would 1 gigabyte go though I'm thinking not to far before a credit card is needed.
Firefox offers paid service already.
If that trade is worth it or not is another conversation entirely of course.Smaller independent browsers already have no chance if we're being realistic. Even less so now that Microsoft is pushing more and more into the old anti competitive practices that costed them millions back in the day but would never stand up in court right in the present day.
1.1.1.1/
Fwiw, their DNS service is free. I'm not sure how they pay for that either.
I may be missing something but that's not really true, there was an EU legislation that never got aproved at the member state level by most of them that didn't really apply to VPN and it got shutdown by the EU Court of Justice by violating fundamental rights (not that any of this matters to the big intelligence agencies who simply get outside jurisdictions to spy on behalf of each other)