While we have known that Google’s Chrome browser is a memory hog, we still love to use it. This is because of Google’s Chromium engine which it is based on. However, we have seen that Google’s open-source Chromium engine is used to build many browsers. These are the likes of Opera, Brave and Yandex which offer some level of ad-blocking features inside it. However, the big announcement came when Microsoft said their Edge browser will now be based on Google’s Chromium engine.
Now, the original version of Microsoft’s new Edge browser has come under the scanner. A security researcher has found out that Microsoft’s Edge browser is sending full URLs of the website you visit to its headquarters. Basically, this is not something that Microsoft does on purpose but it is designed to keep you safe. There is a feature called SmartScreen on Windows which keeps you safe from malicious websites.
Therefore, Microsoft has to check URLs of websites you visit so that they can scan if they are malicious or not. For this reason, Microsoft’s Edge browser sends this information to Microsoft’s servers. But the security researcher reveals that Edge is also sending SID which is a way to identify users along with these URLs.
Also, the security researcher claims that some URLs from major websites are not sent. That might suggest that Microsoft has already made a list of trusted sites and all other URLs need to be scanned. The security researcher suggests that Microsoft’s Edge browser can do something other browsers do instead of sending URLs.
He says that “Firefox, Chrome, and Safari do not send your browsing history to their cloud overlords as Edge does. They compare 4-byte URL hash prefixes with downloaded bad hash lists”. This will not only serve the purpose but also solve the problems Microsoft might face because of this revelation.