New IE browser helps workers break rules
August 29, 2008 by Valerie HelmbreckPosted in: Communication, Compliance, Information security, Software, Software shortcuts, Special Report, Web browsers
Your organization may — or may not — be a fan of Microsoft’s latest ideas for helping Web surfers hide their online travels.
Early this week, the software giant confirmed that it will include “private browsing” as a feature in the next version of its Web browser, Internet Explorer.
Also known as “porn mode,” the ability to cover one’s online tracks is a capability other browsers have featured in past releases. Now MS seems to be climbing on the band wagon.
IE 8 Beta 2 is expected to go to testers later this week.
The IE private browsing feature, called “InPrivate,” lets users hide their online visits. But according to reports, Microsoft is taking this functionality to new levels.
IE 8 Beta 2 lets users to delete selected cookies — not just all of them. This means a user can ditch evidence of some visited sites, but hang onto the cookies of other favorite sites. (For example, a user could delete cookies from a kiddie porn site, but not have to get rid of the ones that make it easy to log into their bank statement or buy movie tickets via a Web page.)
This from the official IE blog:
“Have you ever wanted to take your web browsing ‘off the record’? Perhaps you’re using someone else’s computer and you don’t want them to know which sites you visited. Maybe you need to buy a gift for a loved one without ruining the surprise. Maybe you’re at an Internet kiosk and don’t want the next person using it to know at which website you bank.
“What if you want to delete your browsing history after the fact, but you don’t want to lose your preferences at websites that you use frequently?
“When we began planning IE8, we took a hard look at our customers’ concerns about privacy on the web. As evidenced by some of the comments on this blog during the IE7 days, many users are concerned about so-called ‘over-the-shoulder privacy’, or the ability to control what their spouses, friends, kids, and co-workers might see.”
The IE blog touts some more privacy features, including:
- “InPrivate Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it,” and
- “InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow.”
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Tags: cookies, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, new release, privacy, Web browsers
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Are you sure this is correct? A news report I heard stated that this feature would be in the consumer version but that the enterprise versions of IE8 would still allow IT depts to monitor employee activity.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Wow, I think using the kiddie porn reference here to try to get your point accross is despicable.
They list plent of legitimate reasons for this feature and you dig to the bottom of the barrell to try to convince people this is something that is not wanted, or needed!, when using public computers.
Keep your idiotic opinions to yourself.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
This is not reallly true. Deleting data from a browser does not erase it…it is still there, in 0’s and 1’s at the machine language level. It will remain until it has been written over at least once. Military security requires at least 3 tmes, and preferably 7 to 11 times, to remove any residula electro-magnetic memories in the resisters. So, AFTER deleting data, you need to wash OVER it.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I think that hiding ones’ browsing is a good idea, to a point. I am one person that loves to surprise relatives on special occasions. I bought my wife some jewelry online using my own credit card and I guess that somehow she found the site through Microsoft Explorer. Needless to say that surprise was ruined. Things like flowers for no special reason, etc., etc. We are married 40 years and I always love to surprise her. This may help. I also learned that it’s just as easy to pick up the phone and call in an order. The searching of sites though will never disappear regardless of what you do. EVERYTHING you access on your desktop will always come back to get you. Unless this is the “magic bullet” that will allow you to wipe out every site you visited or do it automatically as soon as you log off or shut down. I’ll believe it when I see it.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
number REGISTERS, I meant.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
This article is more fear-mongering than not. I work in very close proximity to our HRIS and IT teams (and used to work in IT myself) and have confirmed that this feature will do nothing to “protect” an employee that chooses to view (shall we say) “less than appropriate material”.
All requests go from the users computer to the company’s server so logs would still exist on the server to track what an employee is viewing regardless of what they did on their computer locally. Valerie, thanks for the article, but you may want to dig a little deeper before you post information that may panic less tech-saavy professionals.
Lastly, the previous poster is correct – there are innumerable legitimate uses for this privacy feature. However, being a pessimist myself (which works for me in the HR field) I must admit that such a feature could give a false sense of confidence to an employee that chooses to view adult or other inappropriate material at work.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
It may be the bottom of the barrel, but it’s the barrel we live in. It’s unfortunate that while you are working, the person next to you spends half the day on eBay. Or that in your same neighborhood is someone who may not be caught for a crime of “despicable” nature.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Do you think the phrase “Keep your idiotic opinions to yourself” is a good reaction to this article? Is it people like you that are trying to take Huckleberry Finn out of elementary school libraries because of that special ‘N’ word? The whole reason for freedom of speach was to allow opinions to be expressed and ideas to be exchanged.
Maybe you spend more time on the meaning behind the statement rather than the words used to express it.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
If you want to monitor what your employees are doing on the web, why not make them go through your proxy server? They can delete their browser history all they want; the proxy server knows what each IP requested.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
This sounds like a great thing for me, but the only problem that I have is how am I going to be able to track what my kids look at? If they use this at home, since I can’t be with them all day, I will not be able to see what kind of trouble they could end up in.
As for the phrase about kiddie porn, I agree with P Bower in a earlier note. This is the times that we live in. It was happening before now also. It is now more in the spot light due to the fact of internet.