No Privacy on Internet Explorer

Facebook isn’t the only company looking to hand your personal information over to advertisers: The Wall Street Journal says that Microsoft built Internet Explorer in such a way that users must “deliberately turn on privacy settings every time they start up the software.” That wasn’t always the plan: Software engineers originally built privacy features that would automatically block tracking tools and which one consumer-rights advocate called “industry leading.” But Microsoft’s executives overruled them because users’ online information is valuable to advertisers. More scary stuff: A Journal survey found that the 50 most-popular U.S. websites installed on average 64 pieces of tracking technology each onto a test computer.