What is the Do Not Track feature in Microsoft Edge?

Before going into the feature, Let us understand a little bit about cookies and tracking by going through an illustrative scenario:

Generally, when we a user let’s say Ravi wants to open an E-Commerce website ABC.Com, after Login, ABC.Com wants to collect some data about user behavior on the website, his preferences, etc, this might use its script to collect data, and store it in the form of cookies(data that is stored on the browser in small files). It is for analyzing the user behavior, preferences, etc, and storing some data locally like cart information.

Now, ABC.com uses third-party tools (google or Facebook amazon, etc) to display ads on the ABC.com website to increase the revenue of the site. Now when Ravi visits and starts using ABC.com, the third-party cookie here (google or Facebook)starts collecting data and stores it in cookies.

Similarly, there are hundreds of thousands of web applications and we visit 100 to 1000 or even more on average in a month. These are all probably using third-party tools, which means whenever we visit any website, in general, there is some third-party script running there which is collecting information about what we have clicked, how much time we spent etc. This data then used by that third party like google or facebook to show personalized ads, marketing etc. By this point, You might have clearly understood that although for customization and personalized experience website uses data, we are actually getting tracked every where we go on the Internet.

So, Now comes to the point- What & Why this DO NOT TRACK FEATURE?

Do Not Track is a feature provided by the browser that allows the users choose whether to set a Do not Track Header in the HTTP request sent to the server. This Do not Track header in the request header specifies the server whether the user is comfortable or willing to allow websites to track their activity or not. It is a privacy preference that users can enable or disable in their browser settings.

When Do not Track feature is set to ON in the browser – In every request sent to the server, the DO NOT TRACK header is added to the request, that means user is not willing to let the websites track them. When DO not Track feature is set to off in the browser – This means that, there is no particular objection from user for allowing websites to track or not, that means user did not express anything regarding tracking. By default, Do Not Track feature is set to OFF in Microsoft Edge, that means we are not expressing any opinion regarding tracking and probably willing to be tracked by the websites.

Note: Honoring Do Not Track feature is not a legal compliance, that implies even if you enable the option, web sites may still dishonor the Do Not Track header and still track, some websites might respect the user expression and might refrain from tracking, but there is no rule that, if you enable, websites must refrain from tracking, they might still track you. According to Forbes and DuckDuckGo, Major tech companies like google, facebook, and twitter do not respect the do not track feature.

Microsoft Edge is a web browser by Microsoft. Edge provides various features that ensure the privacy of the users and Do Not Track is one such feature that we have in Edge which helps to provide a certain degree of privacy to us. It is also sometimes referred to as the DNT feature.