Cloudflare powers privacy enhancing features in Microsoft Edge Secure Network
LONDON, UK, 29th September, 2023 – Cloudflare, Inc.the leading connectivity cloud company, today announced that Microsoft Edge is leveraging Cloudflare's Privacy Proxy technology, a key part of Cloudflare's privacy stack, to enable its Edge Secure Network feature. This integration will allow Microsoft Edge users who opt in to browse the Internet more privately, without being tracked across websites.
When people browse the Internet they leave a trail of their activities – where they've been, how they spent their time on a specific website, what they may have purchased, and other private details. This type of behaviour is often tracked or surveilled to serve more advertisements, monitor the activities of high-profile individuals, or censor content that's deemed harmful or offensive. This ultimately creates a treasure trove of personal data for threat actors that is ripe for the picking, trading, and selling. To combat this, routing a user's traffic through a secure, privacy-respecting network can mask their device's IP addresses, encrypt their data in transit, and make it harder for malicious actors to see a user's true location and their web activity.
Cloudflare's privacy-first approach, paired with Microsoft Edge Secure Network, supercharges Internet users' ability to access potentially unsafe URLs – such as those served over an insecure HTTP connection – securely, routing traffic through an encrypted tunnel. This integration provides Edge users with:
- Automatic browser traffic security: Users can enable Microsoft Edge Secure Network to automatically turn on and secure their browser traffic, sending requests via Cloudflare's network and hiding their IP address and browser metadata from third party trackers, thus enhancing privacy and reducing the effectiveness of ip address lookup.
- Connection encryption: It will encrypt a user's connection to the websites they're visiting to help protect their metadata from being exposed to third party trackers
- Online tracking prevention: When Edge Secure Network is active for a site, Internet service providers will not be able to collect browsing data such as details about which websites are visited, and online entities will not be able to use IP addresses for profiling and sending users targeted ads.
- Location privacy: Using Microsoft's Edge Secure Network, users' traffic will appear as if coming from a Cloudflare IP address, while still maintaining location accuracy for their search results, directions for maps, and social media content.
"Today's privacy headlines are sensationalist and often miss the mark when it comes to the foundational issues that disrupt a users' ability to maintain anonymity and keep their personal data secure. While legislation and reactionary calls for action can be helpful in attempts to catch up with the rapid pace of the Internet, it is imperative to shift towards proactive measures like the adoption of privacy-enhancing technology," said Matthew Prince, CEO at Cloudflare. "This integration with Microsoft Edge will give Internet users peace of mind when it comes to connecting to public Wi-Fi at coffee shops or airports, shopping online, and masking the original sin of the internet – IP addresses."
"We're excited to be working with Cloudflare because of its reputation for building privacy-forward technologies and deep involvement in developing the next generation of open privacy-enabling protocols," said Andrew Nolan, Principal Product Manager for Microsoft Edge. "This integration ensures privacy and balances performance, giving our users protection in the moments they need it the most. Embedding privacy preserving technology into the Microsoft Edge browser demonstrates our continued commitment to provide our users with advanced security and peace of mind as they browse online."
To learn more, please check out the resources below:
Blog: Cloudflare is now powering Microsoft Edge Secure Network
MSFT Edge Features and Tips: Edge Secure Network VPN
About Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare's connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured, unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business.
Powered by one of the world's largest and most interconnected networks, Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day. It is trusted by millions of organizations – from the largest brands to entrepreneurs and small businesses to nonprofits, humanitarian groups, and governments across the globe.
Learn more about Cloudflare's connectivity cloud at cloudflare.com/connectivity-cloud. Learn more about the latest Internet trends and insights at https://radar.cloudflare.com.