How to Enable Strict Tracking Prevention in Microsoft Edge

The three levels and what each one blocks

Edge ships with tracking prevention switched on and set to Balanced, so you are protected before you touch anything. Basic blocks only known harmful trackers; Balanced adds social-media trackers and trackers from sites you have never visited; Strict extends the blocking to the majority of trackers on all sites, including domains you deliberately visit. The jump from Balanced to Strict is where real breakage begins, because sites that depend on cross-site scripts — logins that hop between domains, embedded players, live-chat widgets — start losing pieces.

It helps to think of the level as a dial between convenience and quiet, not as an on/off switch. Balanced already removes most tracking without you noticing; Strict costs you a few broken pages and buys back noticeably more privacy. Which level pays off depends on how much of the web you visit regularly and how much you care who follows you across it.

• Basic — blocks only known harmful trackers; for the rare site that breaks under Balanced
• Balanced — the default: harmful trackers, social media trackers and trackers from sites you never visit are blocked
• Strict — blocks the majority of trackers from all sites, including the ones you visit and trust
• Exceptions — a per-site allowlist managed on the same settings page for pages that must work
• InPrivate windows — Edge applies Strict-level protection there automatically

Switching to Strict, step by step

Open Edge, click the three-dot menu → Settings → Privacy, search, and services, or simply type edge://settings/privacy in the address bar. Scroll to “Tracking prevention”, make sure the feature itself is on, and select Strict. The change applies immediately — there is no restart, no confirmation dialog, and it covers both regular and InPrivate windows (InPrivate was already running the stricter rules).

Then browse as usual and watch for the failure patterns: a “Sign in with Google/Apple/Facebook” button that opens a window and closes it again, an embedded video that never loads, a comments section that stays empty, a shopping cart that forgets itself between pages. None of this is damage — it is the side effect of third-party domains being refused. Note the site, add it to Exceptions, and move on; the rest of the web stays under Strict.

Exceptions and the settings that pair well with Strict

To add an exception, go back to edge://settings/privacy, click “Exceptions” under Tracking prevention, then “Add site”, and type the site's address — trackers from that domain run again, while everything else on Strict stays armed. Keep the list short and specific: one site you need beats a blanket step down to Balanced. You can review and remove exceptions on the same page whenever a site starts behaving again.

Strict works best in company. Turning on “Delete browsing data every time you close the browser” in the same settings page clears what trackers already planted, and blocking third-party cookies tightens the screw further — with the usual price of signing you out more often. For the files trackers leave behind on disk, Kleaner PRO can sweep browser caches on a schedule while leaving passwords and profiles alone, so the cleanup happens without you remembering the dialogs.

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