Microsoft Edge Partners Cloudflare And Launches its own VPN service

Microsoft and the company Cloudflare which is a Content Delivery Network (CDN), Internet security services, and decentralized DNS services, cooperate and integrate a VPN service into the Chromium browser Edge. The new feature can now be tried out for the first time by anyone via the Edge Canary.

Microsoft Edge Secure Network uses Cloudflare VPN

As Cloudflare announced in an official press release, the company, together with Microsoft, is integrating the so-called Cloudflare Proxy, a VPN service limited to 1 GB of traffic per month, into the Chromium Edge browser. The service, which is still classified as “Preview”, was first rolled out in waves to participants in the Insider program and in A/B testing evaluated.

Now, for the first time, the new feature is also available to everyone via the pre-release on the Canary Channel, like u/Leopeva64-2 via the subreddit r/Microsoft Edge was the first to report. Even Microsoft has announced itself on the official support site and already commented on the new feature, which will be called “Microsoft Edge Secure Network”.

The Microsoft Edge Secure Network is a service provided in partnership with Cloudflare. Cloudflare is committed to privacy and as such collects only a very limited amount of diagnostic and support data as Microsoft’s data subprocessor to provide the Services. Cloudflare permanently deletes the collected diagnostic and support data every 25 hours. Microsoft

In the future, the feature should be able to be activated and deactivated via Menu → Secure Network and will also be automatically terminated when the browser is closed. Similar to a download progress display, the VPN data volume, which is limited to 1 GB, is also visualized in the browser.

A Microsoft account is required

Users who want to try out the VPN feature or want to use it later in the final version must sign in to Microsoft Edge with a valid Microsoft account. No VPN service without a Microsoft account.

Browsers with VPN services in the fashion

Other browsers such as Opera, Opera GX, Brave, and UR Browser also integrate a limited free VPN service, while Mozilla offers a paid service from 5 euros per month with the Mozilla VPN.

Tor, OpenVPN, and WireGuard as alternatives

Another alternative is offered by software solutions such as OpenVPN and WireGuard as well as the Tor browser based on Firefox with decentralized onion routing. The manufacturer AVM, for example, started with Fritz!OS 7.50 with the free VPN technology WireGuard, which has been integrated directly in the kernel since Linux 5.6 to implement its ADSL, VDSL, cable, and hybrid routers in the operating system.

Ron Harold

It has been a long time since I joined Research Snipers. Though I have been working as a part-time tech-news writer, it feels good to be part of the team. Besides that, I am building a finance-based blog, working as a freelance content writer/blogger, and a video editor.