Security News > 2020 > March > Microsoft Edge Shares Privacy-Busting Telemetry, Research Alleges
Microsoft Edge is one of the least private web browsers - even more so than other popular browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox - according to academic researchers.
According to the analysis, from Douglas Leith with the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College in Ireland, Edge sends privacy-invasive telemetry to Microsoft's back-end servers - including "Persistent" device identifiers and URLs typed into browsing pages.
In the third, least private group was Microsoft Edge and Russian web browser Yandex Browser.
"From a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge and Yandex are qualitatively different from the other browsers studied. Both send persistent identifiers than can be used to link requests to back-end servers."
Previous web browsing privacy research has measured web tracking and advertising ecosystems, or methods for detecting and blocking trackers - but Leith said that these observations have assumed the browser itself is a trustworthy program.