IE9 Privacy and Security Evolve with the RC, Tracking Protection Now Available

In December 2010 Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer promised that with the delivery of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Release Candidate (RC), the IE Team would also introduce a new feature, dubbed Tracking Protection.

Information on this feature has been available for a while now, but starting today, February 10, 2011, IE9 RC with Tracking Protection can be downloaded from Microsoft.

Build 9.0.8080.16413 is the first release of IE9 to enable users to control the communications between the browser and third-party websites.

IE9 allows for online tracking to be blocked or allowed in accordance with Tracking Protection Lists which can be integrated in the browser.

With the advent of IE9 RC, various privacy groups, including Privacy Choice and Easy List are making available the first Tracking Protection Lists for Internet Explorer 9.

But Tracking Protection is not the only new addition to IE9 RC in terms of privacy and security, with the browser now also featuring Pinned Sites InPrivate and ActiveX Filtering.

“ActiveX is a technology that allows web developers to create interactive content on their sites, but it can also pose a security risk. Internet Explorer 9 RC allows you to block ActiveX controls for all sites, and then turn them back on for only the sites that you trust with the new ActiveX Filtering option,” Microsoft stated.

“InPrivate browsing is now supported on pinned sites giving you more choice and increased privacy across all your browsing experiences. When you pin a site with InPrivate browsing enabled, the next time you launch the pinned site, the browsing session is automatically enabled as InPrivate,” the company added.

With IE9 RC, users can continue to rely on the Download Manager with SmartScreen “Malvertising” protection, a feature designed to protect them from malicious downloads.

“Between 30% and 40% of the executable downloads today that have limited or no reputation established in our app rep system later end up declared as malware,” the software giant underlined.

And in the end, IE9 proves that it can be trusted more than its rivals, especially those browsers that phone home to report everything that users enter in the Address Bar / Search Box.

IE9 RC’s One Box doesn’t send the customers’ keystrokes to any service, while still allowing them to easily change their search provider.

IE9 RC Supports HTML5 Geolocation, Advances Interoperability

IE9 RC Sports a UI Facelift

IE9 RC Performance Superior to IE9 Beta, to All Rival Browsers

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Release Candidate (RC) Build 9.0.8080.16413 is available for download here.