Microsoft blasts back against IE8 privacy slurs

BUILDER OF SOFTWARE Microsoft has issued a lengthy defence of its Internet Explorer 8 privacy policies, after it was accused of giving in to the whims of executives looking to sell ads.

The Wall Street Journal said that Microsoft gave up the chance of giving users automatic privacy because executives said it would make it tougher to sell online ads to people. Now most people have to choose these privacy features, that is if they even know they are there.

In a blog post, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Vole's IE team defended the company by saying that browsing the web is an information exchange, where your browser offers up information about the web surfer to get information from websites.

This was in effect a denial that the IE developers were planning to send out a product that used the privacy browsing mode as the default, as Hachamovitch said it would have hobbled some basic web functionality.

He argued that if users wanted privacy for their web browsing, all they simply needed to do was turn on the Private browsing feature, as in common with Firefox and Safari.

It would have been pretty surprising if, as the WSJ reported, the IE developers expected to get away with putting in this feature in the name of privacy, as financial considerations will always be considered.

In the end it's up to the user. If you want privacy then the feature is not that difficult to turn on. µ