Forum Discussion
Not signing into the browser? Why or why not, we would love to better understand!
Hi All,
We are finishing the rollout of our new Microsoft Edge to our Windows 10 customers and would like to get additional feedback.
If you have chosen not to sign in to the browser, we'd like to better understand why, as we're reviewing decisions around personalization and want to make sure that we're accurately prioritizing your needs. (We're already looking into synchronization of history, open tabs, and mobile-to-desktop / desktop-to-mobile.)
So, could you help us understand why you chose not to sign into the browser and how we can help provide missing capabilities, explain benefits better, or streamline the process? We want to make it easy to unlock all the personalized features available in Microsoft Edge!
We will be active in this thread and have also set up some time for you to call in to talk with us on Thursday September 10th from noon - 1:30 pm PDT. Link to calendar invite for this call: https://ux.microsoft.com/Talk/EdgeSignIn
Thanks,
Elliot
18 Replies
Hi All,
We are now live and waiting for folks to call in and talk to us.
Here is the link again: https://ux.microsoft.com/Talk/EdgeSignIn
Thanks,
Elliot
I missed the meeting, but signing in is critically important to me as an admin. I have multiple Microsoft accounts, personal, work1, work2, work3 each with their own Edge profile. Sometimes it works great and sometimes not so much, especially with seamless single sign on. My primary account used on the computer works fine. My personal account works fine. The problem is with the secondary work accounts. From release to release of Edge, it starts prompting which I account I want to user every time I go to Microsoft sites and I can't figure out how to detangle them. Sometimes it decides it wants to use the primary account and doesn't prompt cause a login loop where I have to logout and back in for each MS admin console. So what was a joy to use becomes a tedious chore and hindrance.
There needs to be a way to only allow one MS account per profile. I don't know why the profile logged into the browser can't be used by default for logging in to MS sites.
Elliot Kirk Like several others here, I do not sign in to browsers (I use both Edge Dev and Firefox) mostly for privacy concerns. My two primary computers are both Surface devices and usually travel with me. One is work, one is personal. There is some, but not much overlap between the bookmarks on them. If I do want a bookmark or set of them transferred to the other I generally just email myself the link.
When I set up a new computer or a different browser on the same computer, I export the bookmarks and import them into the new browser.
I frankly would welcome the convenience of sharing passwords, bookmarks, collections, etc., between devices but am simply not willing to trust that this information is safe sent elsewhere.
The main reason I sign in is because I expect it to allow me to sync everything between different computers. History and tabs do not sync yet, but they should in the future.
Another reason I sign in is to separate different MS accounts. I have a separate profile for my work MS account so I can open it and already be signed into the relevant email, etc. If I sign into my personal and work MS accounts using the same profile, then things get too complicated.
Another reason I sign in is because I have a privacy profile with a certain set of extensions that allow me to avoid being tracked (extensions such as VPNs, history wipe, etc.). Most recently I used this profile with a VPN to see the promo prices my incumbent cable provider was offering to new move ins (I needed to negotiate a better deal). If I tried doing that without a VPN, the cable company's website would not show me the promo prices due to me being an existing customer.
- Edge is botching my passwords it will not accept them at all times causing me to reset. Please have Microsoft fix the bugs.
The same as when Google started signing people in: privacy and trust issues, combined with feature creep concerns.https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/09/23/why-im-leaving-chrome/
User consent matters. Regardless of the reasons for people not wanting to sign in to a browser, it should always remain the user's choice – and that choice should be explicit, opt-in, no tricking users or using dark patterns; and in the case of Google – not trying to justify their decision by down-playing user objections.
Some people obviously find value in signing in to the browser, however I am not one of those people and so for me personally it is not something I want to do.
Elliot Kirk Why would I want to sign into a browser? I have two PC's, my work one and my home one. I like to keep them separate so syncing between them is totally undesirable. It happened once by accident and I had to spend ages breaking the connection and getting rid of work favorites from my home PC.
So what other benefit do I get from signing in? I'm trying to reduce the number of apps I need to sign into, not increase them.
The solution to this is to create a profile for each account. I sign in and everything I need gets synced per profile, nothing gets mingled. That way when I occasionally need to access things at work for personal reasons, I have all my links, collections, etc right there. Same at home. To me this is one of the best features.
We are piloting Enterprise Sync for the past weeks to rollout to our users.
We (about 5 people) are able to sync on 30th and 31th August.But since 1st September, suddenly we are not able to sync if we logout and login back to the browser.
Not sure what happened if the error is on Microsoft side?From edge://sync-internals/ :
Summary
Transport State Initializing
Disable Reasons None
Sync Feature Enabled true
Setup In Progress false
Auth Error OK since browser startup
Sync Account Type AAD
Version Info
Client Version Microsoft Edge Windows 85.0.564.44 (3b106b45f8e7cd4c3e2aac5a6ba411645c16df60) stable
Environment Info
Server URL https://edge-enterprise.activity.windows.com/v1/feeds/me/syncEntities/
Server Environment edge-enterprise.activity-v1
Fetch Result SUCCESS
Fetch Message9/8/2020, 3:11:38 PM Initial GetUpdates
Reason: NEW_CLIENT
9/8/2020, 3:11:39 PM GetUpdates Response
Received error: SERVER_RETURN_TRANSIENT_ERROR. cV=b7yDKFSDT0t6OwNJ35IU0t.0;server=DB5PEPF000043D2
9/8/2020, 3:21:39 PM Initial GetUpdates
Reason: NEW_CLIENT
9/8/2020, 3:21:39 PM GetUpdates Response
Received error: SERVER_RETURN_TRANSIENT_ERROR. cV=mV5g6oagsePfguwJ8Vyq0f.0;server=DB5PEPF000043E9
9/8/2020, 3:31:39 PM Initial GetUpdates
Reason: NEW_CLIENT
9/8/2020, 3:31:39 PM GetUpdates Response
Received error: SERVER_RETURN_TRANSIENT_ERROR. cV=9Njimg2uDPIqCGUeVaAVxR.0;server=DB5PEPF000043CF
9/8/2020, 3:41:39 PM Initial GetUpdates
Reason: NEW_CLIENT
9/8/2020, 3:41:39 PM GetUpdates Response
Received error: SERVER_RETURN_TRANSIENT_ERROR. cV=hUTxIm2KGOnJNZq229gj+F.0;server=DB5PEPF000043DFElliot Kirk Without the ability to send webpages to iOS, signing in is just about useless for me. I only ever signed in to Chromium Edge because when it was released, I thought "maybe they will have improved it from that bare-bones beta version" but it's still pretty incomplete 😕
There's not much use in signing in even if that is eventually added in because there's almost no reason not to use Firefox instead
I simply don't want to sign into browser just for personal privacy reasons.
Ironically though even I didn't sign into the browser, I kept sign in with accounts like Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook and etc on webpages for easier access.
I only sign into browser for syncing bookmarks and maybe collections between devices, otherwise I just sign out of the browser.
Hi Limyx826 ,
When you say:
Limyx826 wrote:
I only sign into browser for syncing bookmarks and maybe collections between devices, otherwise I just sign out of the browser.
Does this mean that you will sign into the browser when you first install it, synch over your bookmarks, passwords, extensions, etc. then sign out?
Do you feel like you would be more likely to stay signed in once we get history / tab sync working between mobile and desktop?
In case user is using single device and not want to Sync everything across all devices, there is no reason of sign-in with account. There are cases like guest is coming and then we relay on InPrivate or Guest profile.
However, it would be nice to have option like complete profile removal. One of greatest concern for many users is like they are sign in with profile and then sign out but even they sign out, part of profile or component or profile name might remains in the system. So in case when user sign out and chose to remove profile, it completely remove all traces of profile (e.g. in File, Registry,...) , then users will trust more on profile.
Another interesting feature would be ability to set delete unused profile after a while (e.g. 30 days) or ability for user to set remove profile from specific device using Microsoft Account settings.
This is an interesting idea. You would want to sort of timebomb all personal information based on session? Like a personalized InPrivate session?
Thanks - Elliot
Hi Elliot Kirk
Yes, it would be nice it would be based on session and also based on profile.
Let say in case of profile , we are able to sign out from profile and then we could sign in later. However, when we sign out , then even in case we remove profile, some traces of profile still remains. It would be nice to remove all traces from signed in profile.
Exactly like InPrivate Browsing where closing it remove everything, remove account should remove all traces of the profile.
