With all the attention Microsoft Edge has garnered in recent months, powered by GPT-4-backed Bing, there is a new development that suggests the browser has been leaking users’ visited sites to its API site, bingapis.com. This privacy concern was initially brought to light by Reddit users. According to The Verge, the latest version of Microsoft Edge sends a list of URLs for every page visited to bingapis.com.
Reddit user Hackermchackface, who first discovered the flaw on the site, stated, “Searching for references to this URL gives very few results, no documentation on this feature at all." While most users were unable to identify the exact cause of the privacy issue, software engineer Rafael Rivera investigated the matter and found that it was a “poorly implemented new feature in Edge."
Rafael Rivera informed The Verge that “Microsoft Edge now has a creator follow feature that is enabled by default," Rafael Rivera told The Verge. He added, “It appears the intent was to notify Bing when you’re on certain pages, such as YouTube, The Verge, and Reddit. But it doesn’t appear to be working correctly, instead sending nearly every domain you visit to Bing."
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The Verge reports that Microsoft began testing the creator follow feature last year but only recently implemented it widely. It allows users to subscribe and discover artists and creators across the web. If users choose to stop using the feature, Bing will not send URLs to bingapis.com, preventing the privacy flaw.
Microsoft has acknowledged the issue and is working on a fix. Until then, it is recommended that users disable the creator follow feature.
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