IE8 Will Contain an Accidental Ad Blocker

Have you ever wanted to take your web browsing “off the record”? Perhaps you’re using someone else’s computer and you don’t want them to know which sites you visited. Maybe you need to buy a gift for a loved one without ruining the surprise. Maybe you’re at an Internet kiosk and don’t want the next person using it to know at which website you bank.

Privacy advocates think the next version, version 8, of Internet Explorer, the program that connects most of us to the Web, is a step in the right direction.

Advertisers? Well, they're not so sure.

The advertising industry is bracing for trouble from the next version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, details of which were announced today, because it will offer a feature that blocks some ads and other content from third-parties that shows up on Web pages.

"It has the potential to undermine the economies of the Internet," said Mike Zaneis, vice president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Most online advertising is served to Web pages by advertising networks -- third parties. Blocking the ads would cut into the money Web publishers rely on, he said. While other ad blockers have been around, this feature worries some because it would come built into the world's most popular Web browser.

A Microsoft spokesman said that the feature, to be known as "InPrivate Blocking," was never designed to be an ad blocker, though "there may be ads that get blocked."
Instead, it was designed to stop tracking "pixels" or pieces of code that could allow third-party sites to track users as they move around the Web.

Via email, Microsoft sent Web pages over for NYTimes.com, CNN.com and Washingtonpost.com showing that with or without "InPrivate Blocking," the ads came through.

With respect to privacy, IE8 gives users more choice about controlling what information they keep and exchange. In the first part of this post I’ll describe two Internet Explorer 8 features that help you control your history, cookies, and other information that Internet Explorer stores on your behalf. In the latter part, I’ll describe two more features that can help you control how your browsing history is shared by websites. By default, IE8 browses the web the same way IE7 does.

• InPrivate™ Browsing lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data
  
• Delete Browsing History helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited websites.
  
• InPrivate™ Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it

InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow.