Microsoft has created a web browser with a feature nicknamed ‘porn mode’ that allows users to access websites without leaving a trace of the surfing habits on their computers.
The launch of Internet Explorer 8 with its InPrivateBrowsing mode is likely to affect the advertising models used by rivals, who monitor sites visited by users and use the information to target them with specific adverts.
It will also enable users to conceal potentially embarrassing websites such as medical sites and pornography that they visit from other people using the same computer.
At the moment companies selling online adverts can gather information about web users’ habits and use it to help them to decide what type of advertisements to show for each individual surfer.
However, the InPrivateBrowsing mode allows people to surf the web without having a list of sites that they visit being stored on their computers.
The new Internet Explorer 8 also introduces an additional InPrivateBlocking mode, which can block third-party content from appearing on web sites. Companies that provide such content may also be collecting and sharing information about what people do online. But users who turn on InPrivateBlocking will not see that content or be exposed to such data collection without their consent.
InPrivateBlocking can also keep some types of adverts from appearing – including those served up by Microsoft’s own advertising platform, whose success is considered critical to the software maker’s future.
Ian Moulster, the UK product manager for Internet Explorer 8, said: “If an advert is coming form a different internet site that would count as being something that is picked up by InPrivateBlocking. You can then draw up a black list of adverts that can be blocked.”
