Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is just around the corner. There are, at this point in time, just five days until the end of August 2008, and the delivery deadline for the second Beta release of IE8 is approaching at fact pace. But even with Microsoft gearing up to take IE8 Beta 2 out of the Redmond ovens, with baking time having almost run out, the software giant failed to indicate the actual delivery date. Instead, General Manager of Team Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, and Program Manager Andy Zeigler, did manage to give users a taste of IE8 Beta 2 by parading new privacy features planed to make their debut in the upcoming development milestone.

"IE8 helps put you in control of your data, both on your PC and on the Web. IE8 Beta 2 is coming soon, and I encourage you to download it and give us feedback," Zeigler revealed. But of course that the Beta 2 bits are yet to go live, and in this context there is nothing to download or to provide feedback on. However, the general consensus in the IE team is that, starting with Beta 2, Internet Explorer will indeed enable users to access advanced privacy options designed to permit a new level of control over their browsing habits, behavior and information.

"With respect to privacy, IE8 gives users more choice about controlling what information they keep and exchange," Zeigler added. "By default, IE8 browses the web the same way IE7 does. InPrivate Browsing lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data. Delete Browsing History helps you control your browsing history after you've visited websites. InPrivate Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it. InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow."

InPrivate Browsing, Delete Browsing History, InPrivate Blocking and InPrivate Subscriptions are in fact the new privacy options added to IE8 Beta 2. While ultimately praised as features associated with users accessing adult content without leaving any traces, enhanced privacy capabilities offer a high degree of control over personal data.

"While InPrivate Browsing is active, the following takes place: new cookies are not stored; all new cookies become "session" cookies; existing cookies can still be read; the new DOM storage feature behaves the same way; new history entries will not be recorded; new temporary Internet files will be deleted after the Private Browsing window is closed; form data is not stored; passwords are not stored; addresses typed into the address bar are not stored; queries entered into the search box are not stored and visited links will not be stored," Zeigler indicated.

The Delete Browsing History has evolved from IE7 to IE8 Beta 2. Set up to permit end users to delete all the browsing information of Internet Explorer with a single click, the feature makes the browser "Preserve Favorites website data." This means that, even with all the browsing history deleted, IE will still have the data associated with the navigation of Favorite websites.

"InPrivate Blocking is a feature designed to help give you information about third-party content that has a line of sight into your web browsing, and gives you a choice about what information you share with these sites. As Dean mentioned in his post, it's possible for sites to track users without cookies. The only way to ensure that your data is not disclosed is to block content and prevent communication to sites," Zeigler explained.

But at the same time, users can go one step further from manually or automatically having third-party websites blocked from collecting their information. This is possible with the InPrivate Subscriptions, a feature based on InPrivate Blocking. In this regard, the InPrivate Subscriptions feature will permit subscriptions to publishers of lists comprising websites that need to be blocked.

"Under the covers, InPrivate Subscriptions are simply RSS feeds of Regular Expressions that specify sub-downloads to block or allow. Anyone can publish an InPrivate Subscription on their website, just as they can offer an Accelerator or Web Slice on their website," Zeigler said.


IE 8 Beta 2: Privacy is about more than cookies