MS 'Edge' - Points and Pitfalls?

Unless you are prepared to work hard at privacy then staying off the internet is the only sure fire way of keeping your life private. The trouble is that the government is leading the charge to force everything on line with Covid giving them more power to their elbow. Covid is proving to be a boon to taking business online to the point that a huge amount of office space is likely to surplus to requirements in the new normal. When the dust finally settles it seems the world will be very different. Much pain has been felt in many sectors but other areas have made hay. My printer failed last year soon after lockdown and sourcing a replacement was not easy. I suspect there will not be many discounts to be found for UK hotels and restaurants this summer.

Mike

I was not offended but found your reply a bit puzzling as I had said that Edge works (Quite well in fact).

I moved my own computing to Apple some years ago but it is surprising the things that seem tied to MS.

Indeed - looking at somewhere for a family reunion for later in the year, the place we used last year has gone up from £500 to £800 for the same period.

Just to bring things back on topic, I've just rebuilt a family PC with a fresh Win 10 install, and thought I'd try the Brave browser. Seems OK at fist glance, appears to be based on the Chrome platform, but is trying to push me to join a Rewards programme of some sort. Have turned off the notifications, but will see how it goes.

Rob

I hope this fits in with this thread. It may influence the decision of the OP before he changes supplier.

I have continuous problems with Chrome and Google. I get the dreaded "Before you continue to Google Search" popup each time I use search or change sites no matter how often I go through the settings

I have tried various fixes from groups on the net. The last one worked for a while but I suspect that the latest update has found a way around the fixes.

From online comments I see I am not alone with this harassing behaviour.

Are the other browsers like Edge Brave etc, any less intrusive in your experience?

Has anyone a fix that works, short of giving up?

John

Nigel Graham 2 " but IE is my e-mail programme." IE uses Live.com ie Outlook. This can be used seperate from IE.

I use Outlook & Gmail for email alongside Firefox not tried Thunderbird yet so one to investigate.

regards

I have been using Edge since Win 10 first came out, both at home and professionally teaching and have had no issues that are unreasonable, even if some might not be my first choice. The odd exceptions are that with an update it has several times reset my page on opening Edge to the default one (but not reset the home page) and on one update the schema for security changed and so all of the choices had to be remade. Edge was originally Win 10 only, but has recently become available for Win 7 - if downloaded it could be installed, but it would not be installed by a Win 7 system automatically, as it now is.

Internet Explorer is too out of date to be recommended and many sites do not respond to it. A point to remember is that a clean install of Win 7 puts an even older version of IE on and this has to be updated or replaced before some other updates will install.

Chrome used to be my browser of choice but over the last year I have been encountering more and more sites that will not respond to it.

Chromium on the Raspberry Pi is reliable, although with some sites it selects the mobile phone version for some reason.

Opera, which should have the best support for HTML5, being developed by some members of that team has never appealed, although I could not tell you why.

Firefox I use on Linux boxes (and also portable apps) because I have had issues with Chrome not installing correctly with some distros when Chrome has been added in addition to the standard software setup. It is also my browser of choice for XP systems.

Of course on the Macs and iPads there is always Safari, but I am not a sufficiently major user of these devices to assess tit in depth.

Finally Lynx is a text only browser I installed when setting up an MsDOS system recently (I was playing - OK?) and while the results in today's graphically rich internet were sometime strange, it did work.

The bottom line for me is to accept that differing operating systems come with different browsers and the default choice is rarely a problem, and never as bad as 'people' will suggest and that if it does not suit Firefox or Chrome will often be valid options. This Win 10 system has Edge, Chrome, Firefox and IE installed although 99.9% of the timer I use Edge.

Some of your problems may be linked to your cookie settings - if you have your browser set to 'delete all cookies on exit' or some similar setting, then every time you exit and re-enter sites you will see all the reminders, warnings, and acknowledgement tick-boxes anew.

It's probably possible to enable cookies for selected (frequently visited?) sites in your browser settings.

It will undoubtedly become harder to 'escape' having to accept unwanted cookies because they are increasingly a resource worth large sums of money.

Because some providers would very much like you to retain all their cookies, there comes a conflict of interest in making sites easy to access for those who don't wish to cooperate or participate in their marketing programmes.

FWIW Firefox is a lot less 'nosy' and with better privacy settings than some of it's competitiors..

The Browser doesn't make much difference in this case. Many websites profit from selling information about what their users are interested in. One application is targetted advertising; you look up weedkiller, they advertise cheap spades and conservatories on the next website visited. These guys are extremely keen to collect information, and one technique is to obey the law on Cookie choice in a nuisance way that causes the user to get fed up and permanently agree to everything. This is all driven from the website end so although a browser like Firefox won't silently cooperate, it can't shield the user from decision making.

I prefer not to use Google or YouTube. (DuckDuckGo is a good alternative to Google) If I do, I open a private browsing session and go through their cookie rigmarole every time. Yes it's a pain. (And still keep low-profile because private sessions aren't completely private.)

Another trick is a menu of cookie options that apparently allow non-essential cookies to be disabled but in fact the naughty boys have categorized their most objectionable tracking and privacy intrusions as 'essential' so they can't be turned off. This one relies on people not reading the small print. Always read the small print first!

I bail out immediately cookie options are found to be obnoxious. If enough people did the same the website owner would have to think again. I'm not against websites earning money by advertising and other legitimate means, but not in exchange for allowing them to collect and share a mass of information valuable to criminals and abusive states. There's no reason the state taking an interest need be the one I'm a citizen of...

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 11/04/2021 12:03:12

I'm 100% in agreement with Dave (SoD) above. This subject of damnable cookies, privacy and "solutions" was aired on here not so long ago. The whole business reminds me of the old adage "you can't win you can't loose, you can't even get out of the game".
I use Firefox and have added the excellent Extension "Behind the Overlay". When confronted with that infuriating overlay demanding you "select" cookie preferences, "Behind the Overlay" will, with one click of their icon - remove it and you can then use the website without more ado. But - and there's a but - a few sites have got wise to this and the screen freezes i.e. you can't win, you can't.........etc. Bit if I really need to view that site then the other option is to load the free programme "Sandboxie". This AFAIK - will permit you to accept all cookies from the site and any other crap the site chooses to dump on you. When you've finished your browser session, you then empty the sandbox, so nothing is retained.
A decent VPN is also a safeguard but that brings its own irritations and still requires a Sandbox. Furthermore Google will bombard you with notices that some foreigner is trying to use your passwords.

Edited By Frances IoM on 11/04/2021 13:38:49

I get annoyed by some of the other stuff pushed at me. Owing to the way the Company IT controls our computers I get the browser options I reset to default advertising every few days and a few similar things. On a similar vein every time I open Google search it wants to display the top ten trending searches. Like I care what other people are up to as I opened you for aspecific serch of my own.
But just now after reading this thread I had a look at the top ten the great unwashed are searching. Predictably lottery results are high, and C19 related items feature wrt holidays Along with some second rate politicians and celebrity names I've never heard of. But top of the list was a religious festival I didn't know was I assume imminent.
The list will have changed by the time you look but let me know if motor brushes searches have hit the big time Well maybe I don't need to enter the search now if Google have read my forum entry.

Motor brushes:-
Brushes

Edited By V8Eng on 11/04/2021 16:27:48