I’ve been reading up on new Windows 7 security features (more on them perhaps later), but one caught my eye – SmartScreen. It’s a web filter (like the one Firefox has) that checks the websites you visit against a list of known bad websites. If it’s on the list, you get a red nasty warning screen telling you not to visit. What I was thinking about though was the privacy aspect – whenever you visit a new website your browser automatically sends the URL to Microsoft. Not just the domain, but the entire URL. They do of courser have a privacy policy, but nowhere in that policy do they actually say how they will or won’t use the data collected (we can of course, always assume the worst).  They also do other data collection:

From time-to-time, information about your usage of SmartScreen Filter will also be sent to Microsoft such as the time and total number of websites browsed since an address was sent to Microsoft for analysis. Some information about files that you download from the web such as name and file path may also be sent to Microsoft. Some website addresses that are sent to Microsoft may be stored along with additional information including web browser version, operating system version, SmartScreen Filter version, the browser language, and information about whether Compatibility View was enabled for the website.

I don’t know about this one – sounds more like a marketing tool masquerading as a security tool.