Microsoft Edge Accused of Sneakily Importing Firefox Data on Windows 10

CyberTech

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Microsoft has started the automatic rollout of the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser on Windows 10 devices, and unsurprisingly, not everybody likes this approach.

In the case of Firefox users, some discovered that the new default Windows 10 browser, which is shipped to their devices via Windows Update, sometimes imports the data from Mozilla’s application even if they don’t give their permission.

Some of these Firefox users decided to kill the initial setup process of Microsoft Edge, only to discover that despite the wizard shutting down prematurely, the browser still copied data stored by Mozilla’s browser.
Several users confirmed on reddit that this behavior happened on their computers too.

Silent data importing
“Love rebooting my computer to get treated to a forced tour of a browser I'm not going to use that I have to force close through the task manager to escape, and then finding out it's been copying over my data from Firefox without permission,” one user explains.


Microsoft Edge Accused of Sneakily Importing Firefox Data on Windows 10
 

CyberTech

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And there I was hoping that Microsoft was at least slightly more honorable than Google, which has recently been quite annoyed that Gmail users might have switched to Edge.

Redditor rexington was also disheartened: "Yeah, I did not authorize Edge to copy my firefox/chrome data at any point. I've jumped through a lot of hoops in the attempt to maintain some level of privacy with this OS. Finally, it just takes my data without giving me the choice to opt out."

Naturally, I contacted Microsoft to ask whether (or why) it was being so disturbingly sneaky. A Microsoft spokeswoman told me: "We believe browser data belongs to the customer and they have the right to decide what they should do with it. Like other browsers, Microsoft Edge offers people the opportunity to import data during setup."

 
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ForgottenSeer 85179

Edge just updated for me, and it offered to import my data from Firefox, which I declined, and it did not import. Then again, I use FF portable, so it might not have been able to import it.
And that is the difference. It offered a import but not do it automatically.

Like I already say and post the link, this was just Missinformation (from a random Reddit guy!) and the media push it like they always do.

Thanks for the verification.
 

Cortex

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If we follow all the security issues recently mentioned on here there are no browsers left we can safely use, Brave took a hit a few weeks ago & was abandoned by some. It seems all browsers sneakily do something - Edge is pretty good from my point of view as is Brave, adding data from FF is hardly espionage?
 

Ink

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Edge just updated for me, and it offered to import my data from Firefox, which I declined, and it did not import. Then again, I use FF portable, so it might not have been able to import it.
You did it wrong. Use Task Manager to terminate the process mid-wizard, then complain about it on the Internet. 5 minutes of fame.

[..] adding data from FF is hardly espionage?
It is, when conspiracy theorists exist "Microsoft spying on my Firefox data" blah blah blah

/s
 

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