Bad news, Windows 10 users. It looks like Microsoft has found another way to annoy you – this time by popping up a new message in its Edge browser that asks you to share your browsing information.
As Techdows reports, this message pops up in an early version of Edge, and while it won’t appear for people using Edge at the moment (unless they are signed up to test out early versions), it looks like it could come to Edge 92, which is due to release around July 22.
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The pop up asks you to: “Allow Microsoft to use your browsing activity including history, favorites, usage, and other browsing data to personalize Microsoft Edge and Microsoft services.”
No one likes having their data shared, but Microsoft is trying to put a positive spin on it, saying that by sharing your data, you’ll get search results that are better tailored to you, and you’ll see better price comparisons and coupons for more savings, news stories that are curated to your interests and adverts that are based on your interest (though this won’t increase the number of ads you’ll see).
However, no matter what spin Microsoft puts on it, what the pop-up is really asking of you is to share your data so it can sell you stuff better (or allow other companies to sell you stuff).
Is it that bad?
Having yet another pop-up asking you to share your data is certainly annoying, and Microsoft’s way of painting this telemetry as useful to users could rub people up the wrong way.
But, aside from it being annoying, is it all that bad? In Microsoft’s defence, at least it is being up front when asking you to share your data, and it does give you the option to decline.
Other browsers, most noticeably Google Chrome, collects and shares data of its users, and you could argue that it’s not as transparent about it as Edge could be.
We say ‘could be’, as this pop-up is still only in early previews, so depending on how testers react to it, Microsoft may drop it for any future releases. We’re not sure, though, if that will be a good or a bad thing. It may be less annoying, but Microsoft will probably still want to use your data, so it may go about it in a different, less visible, way.
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