Newsletter Archives

• Getting rid of that pesky bing icon

  Posted on April 22, 2023 at 22:33 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  If you are a user of Edge, but not necessarily of Bing, nor a fan of the menu bar on the right side, be aware that you can now disable these in the GUI without needing a registry key edit.

  Open Edge’s Settings page.  Click on sidebar. Then select Discover. Click on the “Show Discover” on or off, depending on your preference.

  

  Then on the main sidebar setting,

  

  Turn off always show sidebar.

  I’m working on a “all those annoying things I turn off” document which will be in a future newsletter. Stay tuned for more!

  Windows Edge, Patch Lady Posts

• How to manage your browser cookies

  Posted on April 17, 2023 at 02:44 CDT by Lance Whitney • Comment in the Forums

  INTERNET

  

  By Lance Whitney

  Browser cookies can be helpful or harmful, depending on how and why they’re used in your browser. The key lies in taking control of them.

  You probably already know that Web browsers use cookies to save certain information. Over the years, cookies have developed a bad rep because many websites and advertisers use them to track your online activities for the purpose of sending you ads and other targeted content.

  But cookies can also help you by storing key details at websites that you frequently use. The trick here is knowing which cookies are good and which are bad, and how to manage them in general.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.16.0, 2023-04-17).

  Internet Android, Chrome, Cookies, Edge, Firefox, iOS, Newsletters, privacy, Safari, security, Web Browsers, Windows

• Microsoft kills off Internet Explorer — mostly

  Posted on February 20, 2023 at 02:45 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 20.08 • 2023-02-20

  PATCH WATCH

  

  By Susan Bradley

  Not feeling the love from Microsoft this month?

  That might be because the company is saying goodbye to its aged Internet Explorer Web browser (IE), albeit only on certain platforms.

  For Windows 10, the death of IE is not part of this month’s Windows update but rather part of the update to the Edge browser. That update would have been in the background, silent, and you may not have noticed it. Even if you did, you probably didn’t pay much attention. Unless, of course, you had moved from IE to Edge a while back. For you, the update re-migrated your favorites and bookmarks, making a duplicate list.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.08.0, 2023-02-20).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Patch Watch .NET patches, Edge, Internet Explorer, Newsletters, Patch Lady Posts, Patch Watch, SQL Server, Web Browsers

• Update fails, and WaaSMedic runs for hours …

  Posted on November 1, 2021 at 02:44 CDT by Fred Langa • Comment in the Forums

  LANGALIST

  

  By Fred Langa

  Windows 10/11’s built-in WaaSMedic agent is supposed to automatically detect and repair problems with Windows Update.

  But sometimes, it can’t fix what’s wrong; other times, WaaSMedic itself is the problem!

  Fortunately, there are a number of known solutions — including some new advice from Microsoft — to remedy this and other common Update problems.

  Plus: Edge won’t stay dead! And: A Wi-Fi dongle takes down a keyboard and mouse.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.42.0 (2021-11-01).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Edge, LangaList, USB, Windows Update

• Can you fully delete the Edge browser? Should you?

  Posted on October 18, 2021 at 02:44 CDT by Fred Langa • Comment in the Forums

  LANGALIST

  

  By Fred Langa

  The answer is yes, no, and maybe, depending on exactly what you’re trying to do and what risks you’re willing to take. You’ll find the how-to information below.

  However, because Fred thinks removing Edge is a bad idea, this column also suggests a better, safer way to suppress Edge — a way guaranteed not to cause new problems with other Windows apps and services.

  But if you understand the risks and still want to remove Edge, here are the background and links you need!

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.40.0 (2021-10-18).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Edge, LangaList

• No Chrome? Easily add full-function Gmail to Edge!

  Posted on August 16, 2021 at 02:44 CDT by Fred Langa • Comment in the Forums

  LANGALIST

  

  By Fred Langa

  Setup takes all of about 60 seconds, and there’s absolutely zero old-school POP or IMAP mail-server arcana to figure out.

  With literally a couple of clicks, you can add a permanent, utterly standard Gmail instance to Edge — or just about any other browser!

  Plus: Why some restarts during an update are OK, but others are destructive; and we note a milestone as the IBM PC turns 40!

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.31.0 (2021-08-16).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, browsers, Edge, Email, Gmail, LangaList

• Microsoft Edge imports other browsers’ passwords

  Posted on July 12, 2021 at 02:45 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  ISSUE 18.26 • 2021-07-12

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  When some readers installed the new Microsoft Edge browser — which replaces the old “legacy Edge” — they got a big surprise. They discovered that Edge had somehow magically absorbed all the usernames and passwords they’d carefully saved in their previously installed browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and legacy Edge.

  What’s even more surprising is that Edge — which until recently couldn’t import or export passwords at all — may be doing this new behavior by design.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.26.0 (2021-07-12).
  This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 18.26.F (2021-07-12).

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Edge, privacy, security

• Microsoft experiments with pushing Office progressive web apps onto Win10 machines – without your permission

  Posted on October 14, 2020 at 19:12 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  I like PWAs, but this is no way to get the ball rolling. (There’s a good discussion of Progressive Web Apps on Wikipedia.)

  Microsoft has PWA versions of five apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. You can manually install the PWA versions of those apps on your Win10 machine by using Edge (navigate to the app in the Windows Store, click Settings, Apps, Install this site as an app). You end up with Start menu entries for each. Click on one of the Start entries, and the web-based version of the app appears, inside a minimal browser shell.

  Mayank Parmar over on Windows Latest noticed:

  Microsoft now appears to be experimenting with a new feature that will add [the PWA version of] Office apps to your Windows 10 device without your permission.

  The rollout isn’t happening on all machines. Says Parmar:

  Over the weekend, Microsoft updated the Chromium Edge (Stable) for Windows 10 to quietly install four Office web apps on some devices. This ‘feature’ appears to be rolling out to select testers in the Windows Insider program, but it could also show up on non-Insider machines.

  Günter Born calls them “Windows 10 behavior as a malware?” He’s got a good point – although, to be fair, it looks like the only machines being targeted right now are actively in the Insider Program.

  Lawrence Abrams at BleepingComputer says:

  Those who do not wish to have these PWAs installed can uninstall them directly in Microsoft Edge through the edge://apps URL or via the Programs and Features Settings page [in Windows 10].

  Surprise!

  Windows News Edge, Office PWA

• Dear Microsoft, could you make Edge a little more obnoxious?

  Posted on September 25, 2020 at 14:02 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  So I’m sitting here plunking away on one of my production Win10 version 1909 machines, when a new update appears.

  2020-08 Microsoft Edge Update for Windows 10 Version 1909 for x64-based Systems (KB4576754)

  I needed to reboot the system – it had been running for almost two days without a reboot (sarcasm alert) – and when Windows came back up for air, Edge appeared full-screen. I tried clicking lots of things, but it wouldn’t disengage. In the end I navigated through a four-screen “tutorial” that, by default, wanted me to log Edge in to my Microsoft Account and oh-so-helpfully retain Edge surfing information to, you know, make my shopping experiences more tailored.

  When I finally got through unchecking all of the snoop settings, and closed Edge, it showed this on my Taskbar:

  

  And that didn’t go away until I clicked the “X” in the upper right corner.

  It’s entirely possible that Edge is the greatest browser ever – that it’ll make me brighter, more productive and definitely debonair. But it really twists my gizzard when an app takes over my machine and forces me through a series of privacy search-and-destroy questions.

  I’ve been playing with Edge. I think I’ll give it a pass for a while.

  UPDATE: I see that Shawn Brink on Tenforums has a registry hack to keep Windows Update from installing Chredge. Far as I’m concerned, MS can install it — after all, it is their machine (cough) — but I’m not going to use it for a while.

  Windows News Chredge, Edge

• Microsoft Edge Privacy Whitepaper

  Posted on April 19, 2020 at 09:23 CDT by joep517 • Comment in the Forums

  Microsoft has published a very detailed whitepaper on Microsoft Edge data collection. It is very long and detailed. It explains what data is collected, why it is collected, and how to turn off the collection. No doubt this is a response to the article that surfaced a couple of weeks ago concerning tracking in browsers. You may read the article at [url=https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-whitepaper]Microsoft Edge Privacy Whitepaper[/url].

  Windows 10 Chromium Edge, Edge, Microsoft Edge

• Privacy update: Brave is the most private browser, Edge blabs like crazy

  Posted on March 2, 2020 at 15:12 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  An interesting white paper from Prof Leith, Trinity College, Dublin (PDF):

  We measure the connections to backend servers made by six browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Brave Browser, Microsoft Edge and Yandex Browser, during normal web browsing. Our aim is to assess the privacy risks associated with this back-end data exchange. We find that the browsers split into three distinct groups from this privacy perspective. In the first (most private) group lies Brave, in the second Chrome, Firefox and Safari and in the third (least private) group lie Edge and Yandex…

  [When typing the text leith.ie/nothingtosee.html,] Edge sends text to www.bing.com as it is typed. A request is sent for almost every letter typed, resulting in a total of 25 requests. Each request contains contains a cvid value that is persistent across requests although it changes across browser restarts. Once the typed URL has been navigated to Edge then makes two additional requests: one to web.vortex.data. microsoft.com and one to nav.smartscreen.microsoft.com. The request to nav.smartscreen.microsoft.com includes the URL entered while the request to web.vortex.data.microsoft.com transmits two cookies…

  For Brave with its default settings we did not find any use of identifiers allowing tracking of IP address over time, and no sharing of the details of web pages visited with backend servers. Chrome, Firefox and Safari all share details of web pages visited with backend servers. For all three this happens via the search autocomplete feature, which sends web addresses to backend servers in realtime as they are typed…

  From a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge and Yandex are qualitatively different from the other browsers studied. Both send persistent identifiers than can be used to link requests (and associated IP address/location) to back end servers. Edge also sends the hardware UUID of the device to Microsoft [emphasis added] and Yandex similarly transmits a hashed hardware identifier to back end servers. As far as we can tell this behaviour cannot be disabled by users. In addition to the search autocomplete functionality that shares details of web pages visited, both transmit web page information to servers that appear unrelated to search autocomplete.

  So it looks like the new Edge (Leith says the tested version is 80.0.361.48, which is definitely Chredge) not only tracks what you’re doing, it flags all of your actions with a hardware-unique identifier.

  Somebody tell me again how Microsoft values your privacy?

  Thx Catalin Cimpanu.

  Windows News Edge, privacy

• Say hello to the latest and greatest Microsoft Edge

  Posted on January 20, 2020 at 01:00 CST by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  WOODY’S WINDOWS WATCH

  By Woody Leonhard

  Will Microsoft’s last-ditch effort to reinstate its Internet-browser hegemony succeed?

  There’s plenty to like about the new Chromium-based Edge — but plenty of shortcomings, too.

  Almost as soon as Microsoft won the Internet-browser race in the 2000s, its hold on that hard-fought market began to erode. By May 2007, Firefox was running on roughly a quarter of all Windows PCs. In 2009, Google’s Chrome burst onto the scene in a big way — and for Microsoft, it’s been all downhill ever since.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.3.0 (2020-01-20).

  Windows News AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Chromium, Edge
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