From the BBC:
Medical test
Australian blogger Long Zheng has found two patent applications made by Microsoft on 30 July for ideas it calls “Cleartracks” and “Inprivate”. The applications deal with methods of erasing data that browsing programs log, turning off features that record sites visited or notifying users of what sites are doing to log a visit.
…
Users may wish to turn on the privacy mode if they are planning a surprise party, buying presents or researching a medical condition and do not want others users of the same computer to find out.
I am impressed with the BBC because: 1) They even bothered to come up with reasons for privacy mode that are not Porn related 2) That they came up with THREE plausible non-porn reasons
That is good investigative journalism.
the ball whisk 
I can only add one. One of the chief concerns of our DV safety planning is making sure that internet research for DV information be done on computers away from home, because of how easy it is to be traced. M$ failure to responsibly handle this in the past has left many in very serious life threatening situations.
Note the web advisory that is posted at the WCADV site
Comment by groenefee — August 28, 2008 @ 8:43 am
That is a good point to make. It is easy to forget that computers are a valuable resource beyond academia and business… and that M$ is a shit-bag institution for spending so much energy to prevent its users from having personally-tailored functionality. Does anyone know of a compiled list of egregious M$ failures that have cost taxpayers and citizens money and secuirty?
I know, personally, that their word processing and accounting tools are so cumbersome that they cost Allegheny County over $2000 in billable hours that could have been prevented in an open-source environment. And that was between only three consultants. If you expand that, the waste would be around $30,000 just among consultants one-removed from me.
Comment by tjhookster — August 28, 2008 @ 10:38 am