What Tracking Protection Can’t Protect Against (Premium)

The promise of new web browsers like Microsoft Edge is that you can get the good parts of Google without the bad. But a recent episode has me wondering whether more protection is needed.

“I visited New Balance's website yesterday in the new Edge to look for a new pair of sneakers,” I tweeted last week, describing this incident. “Today, I'm seeing ads for New Balance all over the web. So much for anti-tracking technology.”

My tweet caught the attention of Microsoft, which reached out to me in a credible bit of follow-up. And after some back and forth, they recommended trying Edge’s Strict tracking control setting, as opposed to the default Balanced setting.

I had been thinking the same thing. But me being me, I had also been overthinking this, perhaps. And as goofy as this is to even admit to, I was lying in bed the next morning when it occurred to me. Having failed to find the shoes I wanted on New Balance’s website, I also searched through my Gmail to find the exact model shoes I had purchased previously.

And that’s the thing. I used Gmail.

Did just using Gmail have the effect of bypassing Edge’s tracking protection functionality because Gmail is trusted?

I think that it did. If you look at the description of the Balanced tracking protection mode, you’ll see that it “blocks trackers from sites you haven’t visited” and “blocks known harmful trackers” only. Gmail is a site I have visited. And it’s not harmful. (And please, don’t just knee-jerk react to that one, Google haters, we get it. Gmail is a lot of things, but it isn’t malicious.) Also, using Balanced, “sites will work as expected.” One of the problems with Strict is that some of the cookie “glue” that keeps the web working is undone along with the trackers.

Now what? I want/need to use Gmail. But I also don’t want my Gmail searches to transform into ads when I visit other sites.

I suppose I could try Brave. But I suspect that what it basically does is operate in a mode that is more akin to Edge’s Strict than Balanced.

Another obvious approach is to use an ad blocker, but I’m not sure that “fixes” the problem since Google (and others) would still be tracking me. I just wouldn’t see the results. That’s not good enough, and that I wasn’t using an ad blocker (which is unusual) is the only reason I even discovered the tracking.

And there are anti-tracking browsers extensions, of course. And I’m experimenting with the EFF’s Privacy Badger. But here’s the thing: The entire point of using the new Edge---or another browser like Brave or Firefox---is to keep the good of Google without the bad. If I still have to add extensions to really block all tracking, why bother switching browsers?

That’s semi-rhetorical, of course, as there are other good reasons to choose Edge, Brave, Firefox, and other non-Chrome browsers. But still. Do we have to break the web to save it?

Maybe. Some, of course, will...