Microsoft Says IE8 Phoning Home Is "Pretty Innocuous"

CWmike writes "Microsoft has defended the IE8 tool that suggests sites based on URLs typed into its address bar, saying that the browser 'phones home' only a limited amount of information to Microsoft and that the company discards all user IP addresses almost immediately. Company managers also contrasted IE8 Beta 2's 'Suggested Sites' feature with the 'Suggest' feature used by Google Chrome, saying that Microsoft's requires the user's explicit permission before it's used. They did acknowledge a bug that prevents the request from reappearing when users reinstall the browser. Cyra Richardson, a Microsoft principal program manager on the IE team, said: 'Suggested Sites is connected to the browser's history, and it's not looking at each of the keystrokes. IE only captures the URL as it is navigated [to], when that URL goes into your history.' Nor does Suggested Sites log and transmit cookies to Microsoft's servers, as does Google Suggest, Richardson said. 'The data we log is actually pretty innocuous.'"

Comments

Wait

[malkir]

Let me get this straight - so Chrome logs every keystroke? I'm reading that Google is hardly 'anonymizing' our data.

What's to stop a gov't subpoena from getting my exact letter-for-letter browsing history over the next 9-18 months?

I don't understand how this works.

Re:Just remember...

[hairyfeet]

The problem is this: How many times have we caught MSFT lying now? Hell I lost count ages ago. Don't forget,this is the same company that said "There is nothing wrong with the Xbox 360" HA HA. So MSFT expecting anyone to take them at their word considering how worthless that word has been in the past seems a little crazy to me. How does the old saying go? Fool me once,shame on you. Fool me twice,shame on me. Microsoft is got a long way to go to regain my trust,and just cause they say one thing doesn't mean they ain't doing something else. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV