Microsoft tests 1GB free VPN per month in its Edge browser

Two years ago, Microsoft reworked its Edge web browser with a backend based on the Google Chromium database. Since then, the company has tried to make Edge stand out primarily by adding additional features mostly related to privacy, security, and online shopping.

One interesting new experimental feature that could be coming to Edge soon is the Cloudflare-powered VPN feature, according to Document support Posted last week. A VPN (or Virtual Private Network) provides an encrypted tunnel for all of your network traffic, protecting it from being viewed by other devices on the same network.

Using the VPN service, dubbed “Microsoft Edge Secure Network,” requires you to be signed in with a Microsoft account, as does cross-device syncing for bookmarks, extensions, and plenty of other features. It offers up to 1GB of data per month, with no option to get more data if you want or need it — Edge will track your data usage and let you know when you’re close to your limit.

This low data limit means that Edge VPN will not replace a subscription to a VPN service for people who work everyone to their traffic through VPNs or those who use them to circumvent geo-restrictions on video streams. But it’s enough to use Wi-Fi in coffee shops occasionally, and that seems to be the kind of use it’s geared towards.

It can be argued that using a VPN to protect traffic on a public Wi-Fi network is not Like Important as before, given the wide spread of HTTPS and browsers They increasingly prefer HTTPS connections over HTTP connections when they are available. But if you manually enforce HTTPS connections and browse the internet normally, you’ll still find a lot unencrypted, and a VPN can protect things like DNS requests that HTTPS doesn’t always block.

Any VPN is private or just as secure as the VPN provider you are using – it can still see all the unencrypted data you send because it needs to send the data your browser requests. A Microsoft support post notes that Cloudflare “permanently deletes diagnostic and support data collected every 25 hours” and that Cloudflare’s data operations are “subject to Microsoft’s Privacy Policy. “