How to Enable Tracking Prevention in Chromium Microsoft Edge

[The AchieVer]

How to Enable Tracking Prevention in Chromium Microsoft Edge 

 

The latest Canary version of Chromium-based Microsoft Edge introduces new privacy controls that allow users to block trackers, a feature that already exists in most modern browsers, including Mozilla Firefox.

This feature is projected to be part of the final version of Edge, but Microsoft released it so early in order to collect feedback from the first testers and further refine the blockers before the work on the browser is complete.

What you should know, however, is that the tracking prevention isn’t yet enabled by default in Microsoft Edge Canary, so you need to activate it from a dedicated experimental flag in the browser.

But first of all, let’s see what a tracking blocker does. Here’s the explanation offered by Microsoft for this new feature:

“Tracking prevention is designed to protect you from being tracked by websites that you aren’t accessing directly. Whenever a website is visited, trackers from other sites may save information in the browser using cookies and other storage mechanisms. This information may include the sites you’ve visited and the content you’re interested in, building a digital profile which can be accessed by organizations to offer personalized content when visiting other sites.”

Enabling tracking prevention in the current Canary builds of Microsoft Edge is easy.

The first step is updating to the latest build. Tracking prevention is available in Microsoft Edge beginning with version 77.0.203.0, so you must be running at least this release to be able to try it out.
 

 

 

Next, fire up the browser and then in the address bar type the following code to access the advanced flags:

edge://flags

Next, in the search bar at the top, look for the following flag:

Microsoft Edge tracking prevention

As a shortcut, you can just copy and paste the following code in the address bar of Microsoft Edge after launching the browser:

edge://flags#edge-tracking-prevention

Once you find the flag, you need to click the drop-down menu next to it and select the Enabled option. A reboot of the browser is going to be needed to save your settings.

After tracking prevention is enabled in Microsoft Edge, you should see new options in the Settings screen under the Privacy section. There are three levels that you can choose from, as it follows:
 

Basic – Blocks malicious trackers but allows those that show you relevant ads

Balanced – Blocks malicious trackers and some third-party trackers. You’ll see less relevant ads.

Strict – Blocks the majority of third-party trackers, some sites might break.

The Balanced level is the default setting in Microsoft Edge, but you can choose any level and then configure additional exceptions. Microsoft provides an in-depth look at how the Balanced and Strict settings levels work:

“In Balanced, all users will get a robust set of tracker categories that have storage access blocked, and a slightly smaller set that have resource loads blocked. We have taken care to ensure that these sets provide protection while ensuring compatibility as you browse the web and use your favorite applications. For example, Balanced will allow third party content to enable login flows using third party identities or social network commenting on third party sites.

Our Strict mode provides the largest set of categories to block storage access and resource loads. This is for users who don’t mind a little bit of site breakage in exchange for greater protection. This is also the default level of protection when you launch an InPrivate window.”

Microsoft is expected to roll out this experimental flag in Microsoft Edge Dev in the next version as part of the weekly update for the browser.

 

 

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