Some users say Microsoft Edge sends URLs of visited pages to the Bing API website; a developer says Edge's creator follow option, on by default, may be to blame
how to turn it off Sean Riley / Laptop Mag : Microsoft Edge is reporting every site you visit to Bing — here's how to stop it Tobias Mann / The Register : Microsoft probes complaints of Edge leaking URLs to Bing
Context & Ripple Effects
This complaint lands on a long-running file at Microsoft: Edge has repeatedly been caught behaving in ways users never agreed to. A 2020 study found it sends frequent hashed hardware IDs to Microsoft's back-end servers, and in 2024 the company had to patch a bug where Edge silently imported Chrome tabs and browsing data without consent.
The new report adds browsing URLs flowing to the Bing API, with a developer pointing to the 'creator follow' setting being enabled by default — the same opt-out-by-default pattern behind the Bing notification pop-ups pushed to Chrome users in Windows 11. It matters because Microsoft is already under regulatory pressure over exactly this kind of default behavior: its DMA-driven Windows changes for EEA users include stopping Edge from prompting itself as the default browser.
First-order effects
- Users who never touched the creator follow setting are having the URLs of pages they visit reported to Bing's API right now; the immediate remedy is manually finding and disabling the toggle.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's own probe into the leak puts the feature's default-on state on trial — if confirmed, expect the same forced rework of defaults seen after the silent Chrome-import bug, while rivals like Google gain another privacy talking point against switching to Edge.
Third-order effects
- If regulators treat opt-out-by-default data collection as they treated Edge's default-browser nagging under the DMA, browser makers broadly face a shift toward consent-first defaults, with features like creator follow requiring explicit user activation before any data leaves the device.
The trend: Browser defaults are becoming a regulatory battleground: features that quietly ship enabled and transmit user data are increasingly forcing vendors to choose between growth-hacking reach and consent-first design.