IE Patch Highlights Privacy Efforts

Against a steady stream of security concerns, large and small, Microsoft has released a new beta of Internet Explorer (IE) that incorporates special “cookie” management features to give users control over how Internet sites, and particularly advertising agencies, track their use of the Internet. The feature has come under attack from Internet advertisers, however, and Microsoft also faces new challenges in dealing with additional security holes in both IE and Microsoft Office.

Cookie Management

The major new feature in the IE 5.5 “Advanced Security Privacy Beta” is a feature that refines IE’s cookie management. IE 5 gives users the ability to reject cookies, accept all cookies, or to be prompted before they accept a cookie; the beta adds several features, as follows:

• The ability to differentiate between cookies sent by the Web page they are accessing (first-party cookies) and cookies sent by another site that is linked to the page, e.g., by a banner advertisement (third-party cookies).