Microsoft IE8’s new privacy feature getting an inconvenient label already

No publicity is bad publicity, so the old marketing saw goes. I’m sure the marketing folks at Microsoft are having mixed feelings about that with regard to the latest feature to surface in their Internet Explorer 8 product. IE8 is still in beta but there’s a hum about it already with regard to it’s “InPrivate” feature that allows a user to hide where he’s been on the internet. That’s because the new feature’s unofficial name is “porn mode.”

Microsoft’s latest Internet browser includes a piece of software that allows Internet users to hide the audit trail of websites they have visited.

The InPrivate feature on Internet Explorer 8, nicknamed “porn mode”, allows users to conceal the sites they have viewed at the click of a button.

Once the setting is chosen, others using the same computer will not be able to see which sites have been accessed. Other browsers have similar functions, but this one is far more prominent. Although casual users cannot see the previous user’s search history, authorities such as the police will be able to access it if necessary.

This description seems to be saying that it will stop the browser from monitoring the browsing history of the user, a feature already available in many browsers. To that degree, this almost seems to me like Microsoft is making a statement equivalent to a restaurant boldly proclaiming, “Dine here! We now have forks!”

The rest of the article, however, seems to imply much more. With every request you make via your browser, you actually send quite a bit of data to the server handling the web page you’re trying to reach. The obvious ones are your IP address and your browser type (Firefox, IE, Safari, etc.). What’s not so obvious is your operating system, what your screen resolution and color depth settings are, and – most importantly to internet marketing firms – what web page you were on before you came to the page you’re currently viewing. With a wide enough net, your browsing patterns can be discerned and that means advertisers can determine what’s most likely to interest you. The ads will change based upon that analysis.

If, on the other hand, you can click a button and keep that data to yourself, the entire notion of directed advertising becomes threatened. That’s where the angst in the last half of the article is coming from. While the article didn’t explicitly say this was what the feature was for, I would imagine the industry is nervous for a reason.

So, dear readers, tell me this: if you had such a feature on your browser, would you turn it on?