Will Microsoft IE8 block ads and affiliate cookies by default (or by accident)?

There is a lot of hype in the cyberworld regarding new privacy-enhancing feature of the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 called “InPrivate Blocking“. Imagine if all things that are bad for you would just one day disappear (for your protection)? Where is fun in that. :)

“A Microsoft spokesman said that the feature, to be known as ‘InPrivate Blocking,’ was never designed to be an ad blocker, though ‘there may be ads that get blocked.’ Instead, it was designed to stop tracking ‘pixels’ or pieces of code that could allow third-party sites to track users as they move around the Web.” – via SlashDot

I support ad blocking, but not by any means by default! Badly produced Flash ads (banners) can seriously degrade your surfing experience (and some can even cause epilepsy), and if you really want to get rid of them, you can for eg. use Adblock Plus addon for Firefox. IE users as a rule – don’t ever never configure their browser. They don’t know what configuration is, so whatever Microsoft decides to enable ‘by default’ in IE8, will actually change the way of the web as we know it.

The so called “tracking pixels” are different ball game. I never liked them but they make money go around the web. For noob webmaster they are fool-proof way of implementing very simple functionality. Without them – webmasters would have to implement that functionality in their code on their own, which is nothing more than just a silent way of tracking stuff. Does Microsoft say that silent way of tracking better than ‘public’ tracking?

We will have to just wait and see.