Microsoft planning IE privacy mode

For many, privacy on the Web is a concern. And for Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, privacy is a feature.

In a meeting with reporters this week, Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search, portal and advertising platform group, said the company's browser will come with a private browsing mode. And Long Zheng of the istartedsomething blog surfaced two telling Microsoft trademarks that appear related: Cleartracks and Inprivate.

Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search, portal and advertising platform group

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Both trademarks are involved with Web browsers, according to the applications with a July 30 filing date. The Cleartracks trademark involves "computer programs for deleting search history after accessing Web sites," according to the Microsoft filing. And the Inprivate trademark involves "computer programs for disabling the history and file caching features of a Web browser; and computer software for notifying a user of a Web browser when others are tracking Web use and for controlling the information others can access about such use."

One obvious use case for privacy browsing modes is surfing the Net for pornographic materials without leaving traces, but other, less unseemly use cases also exist. "Users may wish to begin a private browsing session to research a medical condition, or plan a surprise vacation or birthday party for a loved one," according to Mozilla's discussion of a private browsing feature.

Microsoft didn't comment on the applications beyond a brief statement, "We are investing in privacy in IE8."

And in a June blog posting, Microsoft said privacy is one of the major components of the "trustworthy browsing" element of Internet Explorer 8. "The larger challenge here is notifying users clearly about what sites they're disclosing information to and enabling them to control that disclosure if they choose," the company said. Microsoft said privacy means "the user is in control of what information the browser makes available to Web sites."

Internet Explorer is the dominant Web browser, and version 8 is in beta testing now and due in final form later this year.

Programmers have envisioned a private browsing mode for Mozilla's Firefox browser but so far haven't put the privacy feature into the open-source browser. Apple's Safari has a private browsing mode.

[dinojr]

FYI, although not directly built-into the browser, Firefox's Stealther plug-in has been doing the same thing for almost 3 years now. Good stuff.

[Galaxy5]

Wow - that sounds like a great feature!

I should know - I've been using it in Safari for two years.

Gotta laugh at the stupid marketing names..."Private Browsing" says it all in plain English right here in Safari, not some InterCapped Redmond-ese.

[RedJac101]

The problem is very few people use Safari (I include all Mac and PC users). It is just iCrap when compared to IE, Firefox, Opera and or anything else out there.

[umbrae]

Thanks to good plugin support in Firefox we do not need it directly in the browser. Now only is Windows had a private mode to not phone home to Microsoft every hour. Call me crazy, but I don't think a feature built into IE could be fully trusted.

[Penguinisto]

Funny, there's been a live-CD distro of FreeBSD that's been doing this since 2003 or so.

Otherwise, I have a question: How does one trust that "privacy mode" would also block out the vendor (Microsoft's) attempts to get snoopy with the data? After all, they own the browser (IE8) and the OS underneath it (Windows).

With Firefox, it has this feature already, and the source code is wide open for literally anyone to audit. Same with Safari (Webkit) I believe (not sure exactly though in Safari's case, though OSX' core is open-sourced).

/P

[The_Decider]

It is about trusting trust.

Too bad MS has no trust.

[RompStar_420]

Safari already has this, MS is just adding features that people like in other products that they lack, is all and now they are going to pretend that they are the ones that invented it.

Dirty bunch of you know what.....

[ktswami]

Opera (on seven different platfroms) has had a "delete private data" feature for years. You can choose to delete all or any combo of 10 private data elements.

Welcome to the party, IE.

(And, if you're still using IE, switch off, already...what are you waiting for? Ten more features that are in Opera, that IE6/7/8/x doesn't have?)

[shoffmueller]

This feature, no matter who had it first, is mislabeled on all browsers. Should call it what it is:

Porn Mode

[Penguinisto]

ROTFL! Funny, but there's one case where it isn't quite true. The anonymizing LiveCD distro I referred to earlier (Anonym.OS) allowed someone to completely anonymize their entire network presence, and was built for folks who wanted to do security testing, or to have a bullet-proof live OS to surf with in coffee shops and such (where you're not gonna see too much pr0n, y'know?)

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonym.OS

BTW - I did goof - it was 2005 when they officially hit Sourceforge, not 2003.

[rcrusoe]

Any browser's "privacy mode" is virtually worthless. It's just a marketing ploy. Remove your browser history, all the temp files, every "cookie" crumb from every website. Over write your computer's swap file. Scrub your files totally clean. And once you are finished, if you are one of my company's employees, ask me what you have been doing online and I'll be happy to provide you with every little detail. And what we can do, your ISP can do even better. The only chance you have at any privacy online is an encrypted anonymous proxy service. Preferably one without a sharing relationship with any of several government agencies - which means one that does not reside in your home country. In the words of Sun's Scott McNealy "Privacy is dead, get over it"

[highphilosopher]

Privacy is dead? Not so my friend, why when I hop through four anonymous Brazillian proxies, clone my mac address to that of a p3 dell laptop from a college in Phoenix, block all windows in my house with Aluminum foil so no one sees, steal the electricity for my running computer from my neighbor and sit in my house at 12:00 noon and look at porn, no one knows.... They all just think I'm a freak because of how my house looks, and because I'm apparently visiting some website in Brazil.