Microsoft Edge is a web browser that competes directly with Google Chrome. And Bing is a direct competitor to Google Search.
And Microsoft, despite its huge influence and resources, is still behind Google in these two fields. And here, a Reddit user spotted a privacy issue, in which each and every website Edge users visit, Bing would know
This happened because Edge was sending a request to Microsoft Bing API at bingapis.com with the full URL of nearly every page users navigate to.
"Searching for references to this URL give very few results, no documentation on this feature at all," said hackermchackface, the Reddit user who first discovered the issue.
Microsoft responded to the publication by telling that it's investigating the reports.
It was then realized that Microsoft Edge has a Follow Creator feature that is enabled by default.
Microsoft first started testing this feature in Edge in 2022 before rolling it out more broadly to Bing version 122.
This feature appears to notify Bing whenever users visit only certain pages, such as YouTube, simply because it's designed to let users follow their favorite influencers across the web. However, it doesn’t appear to be working correctly, because a bug made it sent every domain users visit to Bing.
It's worth noting that Microsoft has a master filter for this creator follow feature, which includes not following domains like adult websites, meaning that if users visit those sites' web pages, the feature will not send them to Bing.
But like previously mentioned, the bug allowed practically all URLs to pass, meaning that it has huge privacy implications.
“We’re aware of reports, are investigating and will take appropriate action to address any issues,” said Caitlin Roulston, director of communications at Microsoft.
For privacy concerned users, they can disable this Follow Creator bug by disabling the feature. With the feature turned off, URLs are no longer sent to bingapis.com.
To do so, users can navigate to 'Settings', choose the 'Privacy, Search and Services' tab, and scroll down to 'Services'. There, they can toggle off the switch beside 'Show suggestions to follow creators in Microsoft Edge'.
The interesting thing here is that, Microsoft is already on full offense with its Bing search engine.
After implementing OpenAI's ChatGPT with its own AI to create a formidable chatbot at Bing, the company has since been pushing the chatbot towards more of its products.
Edge is a competitor to Google Search, the undisputed champion of all search engines, in terms of usage and popularity, and Edge, the competitor of Google Chrome, the most popular web browser.
It's possible that Bing can be fed with users' browsing data, and as long as their logged in in both Edge and Bing, Microsoft can tie their profiles to better create a much more personalized experience.
And speaking of Edge and Bing, it's also worth noting that Microsoft has begun experimenting with showing more ads or recommendations whenever users visit bard.google.com, the homepage of Google’s ChatGPT-like Bard.
Whenever Bard is open in the Edge browser, a pop-up appears, prompting users to "Compare answers with AI-powered Bing."
By clicking on the pop-up, users can view Bing's AI-powered chatbot in a split-screen mode alongside Bard, with Bard on the left and Bing AI on the right. Microsoft aims to encourage users to compare the results, as it believes Bing AI performs better than Google Bard.
What's more, users have no way to remove the Bing icon, which appears in the address bar when Bard is open in the tab.