TECH NEWS – Is the Chromium-based Edge trying to steal information from its competition!?

Microsoft Edge is the successor to Internet Explorer. Recently, it too switched to the Chromium base, which started in Google Chrome, and has since been used in Opera, too. The browser is now also available on Windows 7. And the users have issues with Microsoft forcing it down their throats with the newest Windows 10 update.

Here’s one user’s somewhat sarcastic comment: „[I] love rebooting my computer to get treated to a forced tour of a browser I’m not going to use that I have to force close through the task manager to escape and then finding out it’s been copying over my data from Firefox without permission.” And here’s a reply: „Yeah, I did not authorize Edge to copy my Firefox / Chrome data at any point. I’ve jumped through a lot of hoops in the attempt to maintain some level of privacy with this OS. Finally, it just takes my data without giving me the choice to opt-out.”

If you think that’s bad, a third comment makes it sound alarming: „Unless you close it via task manager instead of doing the forced setup, in which case it copies your data anyway, and the worst part is most people will never know what it’s doing because they’ll never open it again. I only reopened it because I noticed it automatically signed me into the browser as it was closing and wanted to sign out before not touching it again, at which point I discovered it had already copied my Firefox data over despite the fact I didn’t go through the setup process. At the very least that’s intentionally malicious design, setting the default behaviour to assume the user has approved if they exit out of the forced setup.”

A fourth user is outright worried: „How can I make sure Microsoft Edge has no data? Forced update pulled information from my Chrome browser. Woke up this morning to the forced update. Edge opened up and asked if I wanted to make it the default browser. Before I chose yes or no my bookmarks from Chrome were already on the opened Edge browser’s bookmarks bar. When I clicked no they disappeared. How can I be sure Edge didn’t save any information? I find it strange that it pulled information from my Chrome browser without my permission.”

Windows 10’s newest update also seems to have a similar issue: things happen without user permission. Most of the Reddit users say that „this is scummy even by Microsoft’s usual standards.” And we’d be hard-pressed to disagree. „Your parents and grandparents are probably using Edge now. They didn’t mean to, they just couldn’t seem to get it out of the way unless they agreed to ‘Get Started’,” reads a comment from a software developer.

A response to this seems to be worried about this Edge situation: „Ugh, I’m now freshly irritated by it because I didn’t even think about how I’m going to have to do the rounds for my older relatives who can’t always distinguish between legitimate content and camouflaged ads and get them back on the browsers I’ve set up with adblockers and anti-tracking.” Too many users experience this to not make it a hoax.

And what did Microsoft respond with? Nothing…

Source: WCCFTech

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