Edge sends every image you see to Microsoft, but there’s an easy workaround

Like Chrome, Edge has many features that you can customize to make the browser easier to use. make it more convenient and personalize user experience. However, while these features are very interesting, in many cases they entail a loss of privacy, since for them to work, this means, as a factor, sending browsing data to Google or Microsoft.

One such particularly useful feature of Edge is built-in image enhancement, which Microsoft says can use “super resolution to improve the clarity, sharpness, lighting, and contrast of images on the web.” Particularly interesting are images with low quality or resolution, which also pose a problem for those who are more concerned about their privacy.

And it lies in the fact that the problem with this function (and many other options of modern browsers) is that the browser sends images to a Microsoft server instead of performing these enhancements on the device using local processingHe. This means that Edge sends Microsoft information about all the images we see in the browser if we have this feature activated.

How to prevent Edge from sending images you see to Microsoft

This “super high resolution” feature in Edge is enabled by default. Therefore, many uninformed users automatically grant the browser permission to send images to Microsoft for processing and enhancement. However, there is a very easy way to disable this feature. and protect our privacy:

• Launch Microsoft Edge and open the main menu.
• Settings > Privacy, Search & Services.
• Disable option Image enhancements in Microsoft Edge.

These simple steps will prevent Microsoft Edge from sending images to view in your navigation. The company, yes, plans to improve this feature and make it more transparent. In fact, future updates to Edge will allow you to specify which websites Edge should not be served, so it’s up to the user to decide whether to use it or not.

Version canaries Microsoft Edge already allows, given that it is in tests, configure this option. If you have a beta version of the browser, you just need to go to Settings > Privacy, search and services > Enhance images in Microsoft Edge and click on the “blacklist” option to prevent our selected sites from processing images remotely: Never enhance images on this site.

Please note that this only applies to images. Microsoft Edge has another AI-based feature called Video Super Resolution, which enhances low-resolution video, making it sharper and less pixelated. Nevertheless, it uses on-device processing instead of sending content to Microsoft.