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Comment by ChrisSD | Hacker News Reader

> The one thing that is unique about the [New Tab Page] in the new Edge is that it's actually an online website

> [The New Tab Page] is actually a higher privileged page.

This combination sounds risky no matter how you slice it. Amongst other things, your user's browser security now depends on the security of your user facing web site.

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I'm one of those who think that if you open a new tab or window, the only thing it should show is a blank page with the address bar focused, but I'm probably in the minority...

That is what I'd prefer as well. I thought Firefox had taken away the ability to set the new tab page to `about:blank` but I just checked and it seems that it does direct to there now. For a while the best I could do was to turn off all the widgets on their default "home" screen.

Totally agree, the first thing i always do is to change all those default settings to have a more slick setup. A easy setup option to achieve that would be neat.

This applies to Firefox also unfortunately...

Firefox lets you choose "Blank Page" for new windows and tabs in about:preferences#home -- isn't that easy enough?

Even then I still had to remove the Firefox Home Content features, like Highlights, Top Sites, and a few others... maybe a clean & slick checkbox during setup could achieve this.

Even after choosing Blank Page in both the "Homepage and new windows" and "New tabs" settings? After setting both of those to blank, I'm not seeing any of the Home content here, without needing to explicitly uncheck the various categories within it.

I have mine set to be a mostly blank page with a clock. SuperEvilNew tab is another chrome extension that lets you place arbitrary HTML on the new tab page, and in your case you could you define an empty page with some background color.

Safari does that but can also show your (locally stored) bookmarks/favorites, which is a handy addition

Another scary thing about Edge I hope they choose to amend in the future: Edge "stories" on the new tab page often include Outbrain/Taboola "stories". This means you can actually be one-click from launching Edge to a Windows support scam popup page.

I originally looked at Edge as a very secure browser choice until I realized Microsoft's zeal for ad revenue meant it literally came with malicious links built-in.

Hm, how much would it cost to buy a "Experts Say This Software Is More Effective Than Antivirus" ad on the Edge new tab page that encourages you to download Chrome?

Ironically, this is one of the first ads I saw when I tried the default Edge page:

https://imgur.com/a/TY8CqK2

Text: "A browser that's 200% faster than Chrome". It's an ad for Brave.

That would just be another example of someone peddling malware from the Edge New Tab page...

I would be inclined to say some variant of adware moreso than malware.

At least being online means they can fix it quickly. (Until the next marketing update that adds a vulnerable script, natch.)

Back in the IE5 days they had similar bugs in res:// (DLL resource) pages, running in the then-highly-privileged My Computer Zone. Took years of reporting the same kind of crap before they finally deprivileged it.

New browser, new code base, new devs... all the old bugs are new again.

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