MICROSOFT may be tracking your search results on Windows PCs – but you can stop it in seconds.
The feature is designed to improve Microsoft products, but not everyone might want to be involved.
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It’s part of Microsoft Edge – the stock browser on Windows 10 and 11.
If you’ve bought or updated a Windows PC in recent years, it’s likely you have Microsoft Edge.
And you’re probably using it too, unless you’ve switched away to a Microsoft browser rival like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
Now tech blog Ghacks has revealed an important feature that you might want to turn off.
It tracks your search results that you’ve requested across all search engines.
That includes Microsoft’s own Bing, as well as google or DuckDuckGo.
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Microsoft says: “Help improve Microsoft products by sending the results from searches on the web.
“This data is never associated with you or your device.”
Microsoft turns this feature on after asking for your permission in a fairly vague pop-up.
But it has a support page with significant detail about what’s collected.
This includes the exact search term you typed, the results displayed, how you interacted with the results, and general user data.
Tech giants are constantly at war with themselves over whether or not to collect more data to improve products at the expense of users.
Microsoft lessens the impact by disassociating the data it collects.
That means the data Microsoft receives isn’t linked to you or your device.
So if Microsoft receives specific search results, it doesn’t know you were the person who looked that info up.
If you want to turn the feature off, it only takes a few seconds.
First, load up Microsoft Edge on your Windows PC.
Then type edge://settings/privacy#searchServiceImprovement into the address bar.
Toggle the setting under Search And Service Improvement to the off position.
If you ever change your mind, you can switch the toggle back on at any time.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
