Introducing Microsoft Edge Secure Network

[BrandonMaslen]

Today, we're excited to share that we have kicked off experiments for Microsoft Edge Secure Network in the Canary channel of Microsoft Edge. We are opening this preview to a small audience to get initial feedback and recommendations so we can offer the best in-browser Secure Network experience.  

What does Secure Network do?

With Edge Secure Network, you can connect to public Wi-Fi at coffee shops, airports, restaurants, hotels, & other venues, complete transactions, and shop online, all with the improved privacy and security that gives you the peace of mind you deserve.

Secure Network helps you protect your information by masking your device's IP address, encrypting your data, and routing it through a secure network (powered by Cloudflare) to a server that is geographically co-located so it’s harder for malicious actors to see your true location and what you’re doing. It also prevents your internet service provider from collecting your browsing data, like details about which websites you visit, and helps prevent online entities from using your IP address for profiling and sending you targeted ads. 

                          

As part of our first experiment, we’re giving everyone who tries this out a small amount of free Secure Network bandwidth to use however they see fit.

For some activities like streaming videos, this allotment may be used significantly quicker than other activities like shopping and browsing the web. We encourage you to use the built-in controls to enable and disable the Secure Network and use this data however it best suits your needs and send us feedback about how Secure Network works for you. See our support page for more details.

We will be diligently reviewing feedback as we over the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for Edge Secure Network and help us create the best experience possible!

How it Works

Whenever Secure Network is connected, your browsing traffic will be encrypted and routed through our service’s servers and then to its final destination. This helps ensure that your personal data will be more secure no matter what complicated route your browsing data takes or how many parties are involved in providing the content inside your favorite web page.

Geo Location and Regions

                                

A lot of web technology relies on trying to intelligently provide results based on where you are located.

We want to ensure that the web still works as you expect it to so when you search for a nearby restaurant or local movie showtimes, you can still get relevant results. We also want to help protect you as an individual, so you’re not personally associated with those results just by browsing the web.

We’ve partnered with Cloudflare to help ensure that if VPNs are allowed in your region, wherever you connect to the Secure Network service, you will connect to a local data center and the IP address your browsing data flows through will be geographically similar to your actual region. However, websites will not see your individual network address, keeping your browsing disassociated from you while still allowing the internet to ‘just work’ as you expect.

Microsoft Account and Data Collection

During this preview phase Secure Network requires users to be signed into the browser with their Microsoft account. Sign-in is used solely to authenticate to the service and ensure you’re to receive more free data during the current period. No data about your user identity or account is sent over the Secure Network connection as part of this service. Additionally, limited diagnostic data may be ephemerally present on our partner’s servers for no more than 25 hours to help troubleshoot connection and performance issues, but is not persisted or directly associated with any given user.

See our privacy promise and Cloudflare privacy notice for even more details.

Send Us Feedback

Be on the lookout for Secure Network as we expand our testing. We look forward to discovering how you would like to use Secure Network to protect your data, what works well, and what we can improve. Let us know on the shield icon flyout by giving us a quick thumbs up or down or use the in-browser feedback icon to send us more detailed feedback.

                          

Alt + Shift + I – Shortcut to send feedback

As always, thanks for being a part of this journey towards a more private and secure web!

• Brandon Maslen, Principal Software Engineer
• Kelda Anderson, Product Manager

[#2]

This is great feature, but one issue is the limit of 1GB data usage. It would have been nice if there was unlimited option. In addition, we could predict some ISP would attempt to block this feature , because this is also a way to bypass censorship.

[#3]

It is for testing purposes so 1GB per week is more than enough for testing. I think there will be additional plans when it will launch officially

[#4]

For testing, it would be okay, but I am wonder what the final plan would be, in case it has any limitation several users might not want to use such features. I am also wonder about how it performs in countries under heavy censorship.

[#5]

As always, the devil is in the detail. For some time now I have been setting the DNS on every machine I own or fix to Cloudflare, and I use Opera's VPN when I REALLY don't want anyone snooping over my shoulder. No ad platform has a "legitimate interest" in my bank details or health records.

However here in the UK and ,I understand, in the US the governments are trying to prohibit end-to-end encryption - the usual "think of the children" line.
More importantly, you'll get severe push back from Google et al because they wont be able to track our every click.

Stick to your guns, and don't be dissuaded, someone needs to take a stand.
I've been reading Brad Smith's "Tools and weapons", and I like what I read. It mostly corresponds to my memories.
Its difficult to lie consistently, as various politicians have found out, so I'm inclined to believe what he writes.
I hope Brad isn't planning to retire any time soon :-),

[#6]

can't get a chance to test it any ideas?

[#7]

@BrandonMaslen Guess the new security feature appears only if you use Bing as default now?  It appeared briefly for a day when I was testing Neeva and has disappeared in subsequent updates to EdgeCan.  Looks like it has 'moved on' in version 104 to other users.  It was interesting to see how it protected the IP of the PC when turned on. I ran a live comparison with Edge and EdgeCan and tested using utilities from GRC.com.  Would be interesting replacement for VPN if you only needed the protection alone.  Hope that future postings can explain more clearly how to find and use this. Was glad to at least test for day.  Setting back to Bing seems to not bring it back. 

[#8]

@BrandonMaslen 

This feature has not been working for me for 3 weeks now.  I've send in inbrowser feedback 2 times for this problem.  Latest feedback was sent yesterday the 14th.  

 

Version 104.0.1289.0 (Official build) canary (64-bit)

Dennis5mile

[#9]

Like they mentioned, it is still under testing and preview.
Since you send feedback the Microsoft Edge team will review the feedback.
In case you have another VPN, make sure disable them.
Also try disable all extensions and see if the problem persists?

[#10]

Nothing, yet.
Please, I would like to evaluate it.
Win11 IP DEV 25140
Edge Canary 104.0.1292.0
US Bing as main search engine.

[#11]

Does this work in the same way iCloud Private Relay works? As in even Microsoft doesn't see the browsing history? Interested to know how similar it is because Apple also use Cloud Flare for (some or all of) their private cloud relay servers.

It would be great to see Microsoft also introduce something along the lines of the Apple Mail Privacy features too - Basically using something similar to prevent trackers knowing your true location / identity when opening emails.

[#12]

Maybe this will be unlimited / included for Microsoft 365 (Home and Personal) subscribers in future? Apple has a similar feature (iCloud Private Relay) which is part of iCloud+ (basically just any paying iCloud customer)

[#13]

Let me explain it this way, have you tried using Opera browser?
If yes, you will see built-in VPN which you may enable it and it will create VPN tunnel between browser and the website.
It is similar to iCloud Private Relay on Safari browser.

[#14]

@BrandonMaslen This must be another controlled rollout. I don't have the option at all. I never get any controlled rollout features, at all. I guess they look at my account and say, "Oh, it's him. Skip and move on to the next guy or gal."

[#15]

Same here. I've spent 3 days trying to find it, with no success. I haven't found anyone else with any better results. I sure wish that the status of this project was available in real time for anyone interested.

[#16]

@Dan_AI4GK 

In my experience some features arrive at different times.  Some features may not show up too.  I suspect that Microsoft is also looking at 'control groups' to measure what happens to the rest of Windows as well (like memory usage, etc. ) .  Microsoft has said in the past that not everyone will get 'test' feature.  Another possibility is that they may be rolling out to users who are regular submitters to Feedback Hub.  They may not 'seem' like they are reading the feedbacks but they DO notice when the upvotes become substantial.  If you look at the High volume upvotes you will usually see a comment on them in response.  Note that there are issues that have a low priority (like updating user icons) that will not be their focus for a while... .  Always suggest using feedback facility in Windows and in Edge to let them know what you see.   Have a great day. 

[#17]

For me the feature came, went, and came back again. It took a while to find the 'switch' Edge Settings to turn it on. When it did show up I found that it (sort of) worked like a VPN in hiding your IP address. I ran a program from GRC.com called Shields Up! to verify this and it worked well. I hope that Microsoft will consider that as an option to help secure systems that are targeted when the bad guys use IP to ID users for bad purposes. The feature only appeared in Edge Canary that I am aware of, and it did show up in Edge Settings - I think, under privacy and security. Just check for it when Edge updates and it 'could' be part of a package. You can also search for "How to setup Microsoft Secure network", in case Microsoft changes install process.

[#18]

I know all that, but thank you. 🙂

[#19]

The option just appeared in the latest update for me, I will investigate.

My understanding is that it will hide my IP address from trackers, however the ad agencies / Google / NSA / MI5.5 are a little more sophisticated.

Every browser has components / plugins that reduce its anonymity, the Electronic Frontier Foundation have done a lot of good work here. See Cover Your Tracks (eff.org)

Stever Gibson's utilities are good, and I check our public attack surface regularly, but all browsers send a stupid amount of information every time you request a web page - see Do Not Track Header Information - BrowserSpy.dk

All that information may be useful to "customise the user experience" but do I really need to tell Farcebook my browser doesn't support Silverlight?

Most users of the interweb have no concept of just how fast a browser / web server can be if the site doesn't insert all the advertising / tracking cruft.

Consider the html5 video tag: How hard can it be?

<video width="320" height="240" controls>
  <source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>

Try loading up a youtub page and view source - damned if I can see a video tag

[#20]

@BrandonMaslen 

I'm sorry but after decades of dealing with the positives and negatives of Microsoft, there is no way I could trust a "secure" net from MS. Frankly I doubt that you could convince me that it wasn't shot through with backdoors and exclusions. 

I work on the presumption that anything that goes out over my phone, or my web browser is barely secured - it'll keep honest people honest and that's it. I don't see this project making me think anything different. 

Good luck with it but I'll pass.