Thoughts on edge?

[itslevir]

Microsoft's Edge, in my opinion, has made some notable anti-tracking moves, such as having a tracker-blocker built in, having DNT enabled by default, etc., etc. I'm aware that it's made by Microsoft, who doesn't have the best history with data protection & privacy though. What are your thoughts?

[Dyrimon]

Microsoft Edge is proprietary software. There are alternatives like Chromium, Ungoogled-Chromium or even Brave even if they have some issues. Considering Edge for privacy is laughable. You might consider Edge for compartmentalizing as your work browser if you need support for Google services but that's all it's good for.

[ghost]

Microsoft Edge shouldn't be consider a private choice. It has got some protections, but it's still lacking a lot in your armor. You may be thinking of being private in two ways (i) With default settings or (ii) By changing default settings

(i) With default settings, as you mentioned it enables "Do Not Track", but almost all of the websites don't follow it. So, it has hardly any benefit. Emphasis on "any". It still writes your browsing history, doesn't blocks 3rd Party cookies, and countless others.

(ii) With changing default settings, you'll become only more fingerprintable. Remember Edge hasn't got any fingerprinting protections.

It's most secure, btw, but you should consider it a secondary choice.

[itslevir]

Fair. My general use case is for my school computers which (in my experience) are a locked down choice of edge or chrome in which case I would rather choose edge.

[ghost]

Anything except Chrome is better, great choice @lerichardson!

[itslevir]

Thanks for the criticism :D

[ghost]

It's not criticism 🤣, literally anything except Chrome is better!

[ghost]

I think asking this kind of question is more suited for the r/PrivacyGuides subreddit but if you wanted my thoughts on it.

Any pro-privacy changes are good, although Edge is still proprietary software as @Dyrimon specified and there are much better options. At the very least it shows that there is a demand for more privacy, which is good.

I still wouldn't recommend Edge and would advocate for people to use Firefox instead preferably with the built-in Strict mode for those that prefer simpler UI based setting changes. (Although Strict mode isn't perfect it's still better than nothing)

[Mikaela]

I think asking this kind of question is more suited for the r/PrivacyGuides subreddit

In that case I wouldn't have been available for responding.

[Mikaela]

What are your thoughts?

Edge has been my default browser for a long time, even on Fedora, as it has features such as moving tabs to sidebar without extensions or heavy customization and forcing dark mode (edge://flags/#enable-force-dark) which is helpful during migraines.

I haven't thought much about privacy, but a lot of apps suggested by PrivacyGuides appear to work a lot faster and feel less laggy on Chromium based browsers than Firefox e.g. Element Web and from Chromium based browsers Edge is my current favourite.

[elitejake]

Just so you know, chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark is also available on Brave and Chrome.

[Mikaela]

How about tab sidebar? Last time I tried it was with an poorly working extension that also wasn't too i3wm friendly.

[elitejake]

AFAIK, Brave hasn't implemented it yet. I haven't tested it but I think Chrome has implemented it at chrome://flags/#side-panel.

[DarkMahesvara]

I don't get why anybody here would even entertain the thought about using Edge when they capture the full URL (e.g. https://example.org/privateinfo) even in incognito/private mode and send it to there smartscreen service in the name of anti phishing. They also ping multiple times by simply starting it.