Microsoft’s Edge browser may be storing private browsing data

When Microsoft’s Edge browser arrived this summer alongside Windows 10, it was seen as a major step forward, incorporating new features like Cortana Assist alongside tricks that had become popular elsewhere, like Reading List and the new InPrivate browsing mode.

But now, new research suggests that InPrivate may not be as private as it seems. According to an investigation by researcher Ashish Singh, websites visited from InPrivate can be easily recovered from a user’s hard drive by examining the WebCache report. Visited sites are stored in the same "Container_n" table that stores tab history from conventional browsing, the investigation found.

By examining that table, an attacker would be able to reconstruct a user’s entire browsing history, whether in Private Mode or not. "The not-so-private browsing featured by Edge makes its very purpose seem to fail, " Singh wrote in Forensic Focus...

What happens to those free Windows 10 upgrades after July 29, 2016?

What happens to those free Windows 10 upgrades after July 29, 2016?

Microsoft's ambitious plan to get Windows 10 running on a billion devices within the next few years depends to a large extent on the success of its free upgrade offer.

When the company first announced the terms of that offer last May, it literally included an asterisk and fine print. Those terms have changed slightly over the intervening months, but one element has remained constant: The offer is good first year after the availability of Windows 10.

Here's the actual wording of the offer, as it appears today:

It's free and easy

Upgrade confidently - 100+ million fans have upgraded and are loving it. You'll have a free, full version of Windows 10 -- not a trial or a lite version -- if you complete your upgrade before July 29, 2016.

And this is what currently appears in the fine print at the bottom of that page (emphasis added):

In fact, Microsoft's real goal with this upgrade offer isn't just to get its installed Windows 10 base to a billion dollars. The long-term goal is to help close the books on Windows 7 in an orderly fashion before its extended support commitment ends on January 14, 2020.

Some of those Windows 7 PCs will simply be retired, of course. But what about those that are only a few years old and have more than four years of usable life ahead of them? For Microsoft executives, the prospect that hundreds of millions of PCs will still be running Windows 7 on New Year's Day 2020 has to bring back unpleasant flashbacks of Windows XP's messy end.

Ed Bott sees at least about three possible scenarios playing out when July 29, 2016 rolls around...

Windows 10 at six months: Ready for primetime?

Windows 10 at six months: Ready for primetime?
Windows 10 has been available to the public for six months this week. By the numbers, it's been a hit, with 200 million active users as of the first of the year. Here's Ed Bott's midterm report card.

Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public six months ago this week

The first major feature update found its way to mid-November, almost exactly four months after the initial release. That November update, dubbed version 1511, included some hugely important features for Microsoft's enterprise customers, including greater control over updates and virtual TPM support in Hyper-V virtual machines.

The idea of delivering big feature updates two or three times a year is unprecedented in the history of Windows, which historically has saved those features for "big bang" releases every three years or so.

During the past six months, Microsoft has been delivering cumulative updates every month. That's another major shift in the way Windows 10 works compared to its predecessors.

There's a tendency among casual observers and tech reporters to focus on the consumer experience. That's only natural, of course, because most modern tech reporters are themselves consumers, and they have little or no experience with the challenges that IT pros face in securing and managing computing resources in a business setting.

Yes, the consumer experience is important, but the business story is arguably even more so, and so far it's been mostly ignored in the mainstream press.

As of the beginning of 2016, Microsoft claimed that more than 200 million devices were actively running Windows 10 worldwide, with about 10 percent of that number in enterprise and education.

With that wording, it's time to give Windows 10 a mid-year status report. What's working? What's not? And what's next?

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