[Edge] Syncing without warning or consent

nicolaasjan · Nov 18, 2021

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/11/is-microsoft-stealing-peoples-bookmarks.html

I received email from two people who told me that Microsoft Edge enabled syncing without warning or consent, which means that Microsoft sucked up all of their bookmarks. Of course they can turn syncing off, but it’s too late.

Has this happened to anyone else, or was this user error of some sort? If this is real, can some reporter write about it?

(Not that “user error” is a good justification. Any system where making a simple mistake means that you’ve forever lost your privacy isn’t a good one. We see this same situation with sharing contact lists with apps on smartphones. Apps will repeatedly ask, and only need you to accidentally click “okay” once.)

EDITED TO ADD: It’s actually worse than I thought. Edge urges users to store passwords, ID numbers, and even passport numbers, all of which get uploaded to Microsoft by default when synch is enabled.
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User comment:

It looks like Microsoft released some documentation on “Microsoft Edge – Policies” for Enterprise on 11-9-21. It is only a 472 minute read, but there is some info on Forced Syncing, for example:

ForceSync
Force synchronization of browser data and do not show the sync consent prompt

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-policies
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Does anyone know if Microsoft applies encryption, like Mozilla does?

roger_m · Nov 18, 2021

nicolaasjan said: ↑

Does anyone know if Microsoft applies encryption, like Mozilla does?
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I don't know, but I never sign in to Edge (or Chrome), which prevents it from syncing anything.

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[Edge] Syncing without warning or consent

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