Microsoft Edge gets tracking prevention feature to block cookies while browsing

Microsoft is stepping up its efforts to offer better privacy to its users with a new feature for Edge. Rolling out now with the latest Canary channel release, ’tracking prevention’ is now available in Microsoft’s Edge preview, allowing you to select how the browser will treat tracking cookies as you browse the web. As of now, the new tracking prevention feature can be enabled through Edge’s experimental flags by heading here and toggling the flag to “Enabled.” Once you’re through with that, simply relaunch the browser, and you’ll then be able to adjust your tracking prevention settings from “Privacy” portion of the main settings menu. [caption id=“attachment_6898901” align=“alignnone” width=“1065”] Microsoft Edge’s new tracking prevention feature. Image: Microsoft[/caption] Tracking prevention is set to “Balanced” by default, which basically tells Edge to block malicious trackers and some third-party trackers. This may have an impact on the relevance of the ads you see. However, there are also “Basic” and “Strict” settings, which only block malicious trackers when set to ‘basic’ and the majority of third-party trackers with the latter. Choosing the strictest setting may break some websites though, something Microsoft has warned about in its blog post announcing the feature. As noted by ZDNet, Microsoft Edge’s tracking prevention feature isn’t really a new feature, per se. The feature is, in fact, almost identical to Mozilla’s Enhanced Tracking Protection feature on Firefox. Microsoft does note that the feature won’t work on Mac just yet because of a build bug, something the company will correct with a future update.