Edge vs. Chrome: Microsoft's Tracking Prevention hits Google the hardest

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Thanks for all the great article posts. No matter now much news I read, you always seem to find stories I’ve missed :slight_smile:

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No problem. Glad I can help

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Worth revisiting this thread seeing as zdnet has sort of revisited it.
Woop-de-do, Chredge may not be sending as much data to google as they want, but that does not mean it is more private.

Brave

Prof. Leith says that in their “out of the box” states, Brave is by far the most private browser, sending back the fewest amount of information.

“We did not find any use of identifiers allowing tracking of IP address overtime, and no sharing of the details of web pages visited with backend servers,” he said.

Edge and Yandex

But the most intrusive phoning-home features were found in the new version of Microsoft Edge and the official Yandex Browser.

According to Prof. Leith, both used unique identifiers that were linked to the device’s hardware, rather than the browser installation.

Tracking users by hardware allows Microsoft and Yandex to follow users across installations and potentially link browser installs with other apps and online identities.

Naughty. Very very naughty.
I wonder what @MaryJo and Paul Thurrott will have to say on the matter.

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I don’t use Chrome or Edge, but the study was a little biased to making Google Chrome look good. This is in default configuration, without the user having logged on. I would guess a majority of people log onto their Chrome browser, in which case all bets are off.

The big naughty that Edge does is use a UUID to identify the browser. I’m guessing Google don’t have to bother with that, because their tracking technology is on most websites already and they have other ways of tracking you and, as I said, most people will probably have logged into Chrome for the convenience it provides when using Google services.

Yeah Google have created a fish-in-a-barrel situation that allows unfathomable access, especially for android and chromebook.
MS are left trying to catch up, but once local user accounts are ditched in the upcoming update, they will be able to change up a gear with the harvest.