Managing Edge via Policy

The new Microsoft Edge offers a rich set of policies that enable IT administrators to control many aspects of its operation. You can visit edge://policy/ to see the policies in effect in your current browser: Clicking on a policy name will take you to the documentation for that policy. The Status column indicates whether theContinue reading “Managing Edge via Policy”

Security Zones in Edge

Last updated: 9 February 2023 Browsers As Decision Makers As a part of every page load, browsers have to make dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of decisions — should a particular API be available? Should a resource load be permitted? Should script be allowed to run? Should video be allowed to start playing automatically? ShouldContinue reading “Security Zones in Edge”

Cookie Controls, Revisited

Update: The October 2018 Cumulative Security Update (KB4462919) brings the RS5 Cookie Control changes described below to Windows 10 RS2, RS3, and RS4. Note: Most of the content about “Edge” in this post describes Edge Legacy– modern Edge is based on Chromium and behaves mostly like Chrome. See more discussion of 3P cookies in 2022’s NewContinue reading “Cookie Controls, Revisited”

Downloads and the Mark-of-the-Web

Last update: Apr 3, 2023 Background Windows uses a simple technique to keep track of which binary files were downloaded from the Internet (or a network share). Each downloaded file is is tagged with a hidden NTFS Alternate Data Stream file named Zone.Identifier. You can check for the presence of this “Mark of the Web”Continue reading “Downloads and the Mark-of-the-Web”

Help–The Whole Web Thinks I’m Using IE7!!!

Every few weeks for the last six or so years, I see someone complain on Twitter or in forums that the entire Internet seems to think they’re running an old version of IE. For instance, an IE11 user on Windows 8.1 might see the following warning on Facebook: These warnings typically occur when the browserContinue reading “Help–The Whole Web Thinks I’m Using IE7!!!”