Internet Explorer 8: More secure, private, and reliable

Automatic Crash Recovery

Tab isolation

If a website or add-on causes a tab to crash in Internet Explorer 8, only that tab is affected. The browser itself remains stable and other tabs remain unaffected, thereby minimizing any disruption to your browsing experience.

Crash recovery

If one or more of your tabs do crash, your tabs are automatically reloaded and you are returned to whatever page you were on before the crash.

Browse privately

InPrivate Browsing

Sometimes you don’t want to leave any trace of specific web browsing activity, such as when checking e-mail at an Internet café or shopping for a gift on a family PC. InPrivate Browsing in Internet Explorer 8 helps prevent your browsing history, temporary Internet files, form data, cookies, and usernames and passwords from being retained by the browser, leaving no evidence of your browsing or search history.

You can start InPrivate Browsing by opening a new tab and selecting Start InPrivate Browsing or selecting it from the Safety button on the top right corner of the browser window. Once you complete this action, Internet Explorer 8 will launch a new browser session that won’t record any information, including searches or webpage visits. To end your InPrivate Browsing session, simply close the browser window.

InPrivate Blocking

Today websites increasingly pull content in from multiple sources, providing tremendous value to consumer and sites alike. Users are often not aware that some content, images, ads and analytics are being provided from third party websites or that these websites have the ability to potentially track their behavior across multiple websites. InPrivate Blocking provides users an added level of control and choice about the information that third party websites can potentially use to track browsing activity.

To use this feature, open a new tab and select InPrivate Browsing, or select “InPrivate Browsing” from the Safety menu. To end your InPrivate Browsing session, simply close the browser window.

Note: Because InPrivate Blocking is designed to watch for and block only third-party content that appears with a high frequency across sites you visit, no content is blocked until such levels are detected, nor is any such content blocked which is served directly by the site you are visiting. Depending on your web browsing activity and sites visited, the amount of time it can take before such content is automatically blocked can vary widely. However, at any time, you can customize which third-party content is blocked or allowed though subscribing to InPrivate allow and block feeds.

Enhanced delete browsing history

Now when deleting browsing history, you can choose to preserve cookies and temporary Internet files for sites in your Favorites folder. This helps to protect your information and privacy while preserving your data on your trusted favorite sites. Your preferences and cookies are preserved, helping you to get to your trusted sites faster with greater confidence.

Stay safer online

As the web continues to increase in complexity, so do the number of ways that hackers and malicious websites can attempt to send viruses, damage computers, obtain personal information, and monitor online behavior.

Did You Know?

Malware is software that designed to damage your computer, such as a computer virus. It may download without your knowledge or permission.

Phishing allows criminals to obtain your personal information (like your credit card number) by pretending to be a legitimate organization, such as your bank.

Internet Explorer helps protect against these attacks and more. Delivering a trustworthy browser means providing a highly secure and reliable browser—one that respects user choice and helps keep users in control of their PC and their information.

SmartScreen Filter

Internet Explorer 8’s new SmartScreen Filter builds upon our leadership in the detection of phishing sites and now helps protect you against inadvertent installation of malware—or malicious software—which can compromise your data, privacy, and identity while also damaging your computer and valuable data. Today Internet Explorer is detecting over 1 million attempts to visit known phishing sites weekly.

With our enhancements in Internet Explorer 8 and added telemetry and technologies, users are now afforded a higher level of protection from these emerging threats.

While we recommend all users enable SmartScreen, you can enable or disable it at any time. You can also help improve the web for everyone by reporting suspected malicious sites through this tool.

If the SmartScreen Filter is active and you attempt to visit a website that isn’t considered safe, the below screen will appear prompting you to take alternative actions.

When active, the SmartScreen Filter will also notify you when you attempt to download software that is potentially unsafe.

Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Filter

Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks have emerged as a leading exploit against web servers and web applications. Internet Explorer 8 introduces the capability to detect malicious code running on compromised websites, helping to protect you from these exploits which can lead to information disclosure, cookie stealing, account/identity theft, and more.

Domain Highlighting

Domain Highlighting lets you more easily interpret web addresses (URLs) to help you avoid deceptive and phishing sites that attempt to trick you with misleading addresses. It does this by highlighting the domain name in the address bar in black, with the remainder of the URL string in gray, making for easier identification of the sites true identity.

Data Execution Detection (DEP)

Data Execution Prevention (DEP), on by default in Internet Explorer 8 in Windows Vista Service Pack 1, is a security feature that can help prevent damage to your computer from viruses and other security threats by preventing certain types of code from writing to executable memory space.