Edge Keeps Dipping Into Your Google Account Even After You Said No
- Client
- Windows users / Google account holders
- Role
- Data import / cross-account reach-in
- Stack
- Microsoft Edge, Chrome, Google account, Windows sync
You told Edge not to import anything. You turned off the setting. And the next time you open the browser, there are your Google Chrome tabs, your bookmarks, your passwords, sitting in Edge, and somewhere in the cloud, synced.
It’s not a bug. It’s a browser that refuses to take no for an answer.
The import that ignores your refusal
Microsoft Edge is built on the same open-source engine as Chrome, which makes it very easy for Edge to read what Chrome has. And Microsoft leans on that. To make switching “easier,” Edge offers to import bookmarks and passwords from Chrome. That, by itself, is a normal feature. The problem is what happens when you decline.
Complaints stretch back for over a year, documented by The Register and reported by TechZine: every time Edge opens, code in its settings pulls in virtually all of the data from Google Chrome – open tabs, bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history – without the user’s permission. Users who don’t even use Edge still see their Chrome data appear in it. And crucially, attempts to stop the unsolicited import by turning the feature off don’t work. The setting is a suggestion, not a gate.
The part that makes it worse
It doesn’t just copy your data into Edge. Microsoft reportedly synchronizes that information to the cloud as well, merging your Chrome and Edge worlds even when you’ve never granted permission and even when sync appears disabled. For someone who deliberately keeps work and personal browsing separate, that single move collapses the wall they built.
Then there’s the account angle. Because Windows links your accounts at the system level, Edge keeps the imported profile active and connected to your Microsoft account even if you turn off sync. That’s how Chrome data ends up reaching into the Microsoft ecosystem: not because you invited it, but because the operating system quietly wired the two together and kept the connection alive.
The update that made it a flood
The reports spiked sharply after a specific Windows update, KB5034204, in January 2024. Microsoft’s own fine print for that update said, in effect, that it “regularly imports into Edge data from other browsers installed on the affected Windows device.” So the behavior isn’t an accident of some rogue toggle. It’s an advertised feature of the OS: Windows updates can reach into another browser and pull its data into Edge, whether you asked for it or not.
This is the pattern that ties the whole ecosystem together. Microsoft doesn’t force you to use Edge with a single hostile screen. It nudges, resets, imports, and syncs, so that the house browser gradually accumulates everything you do elsewhere. Your Google data is the prize, and the import screen is just the opening handshake before the OS takes it anyway.
The receipt
- The scam: Edge copies Chrome/Google browsing data – tabs, bookmarks, passwords, history – into itself and to the cloud without permission.
- The mechanism: Automatic import that ignores the off switch, system-level account linking that keeps it active, and cloud sync you never approved.
- Why it’s still running: Windows updates explicitly pull data from other installed browsers, and the behavior spiked after a KB update that announced it in fine print.
- The fix that’s missing: A refusal that sticks. Turn off import once, and have Windows and Edge leave your Google data alone, no matter how many updates come through.
This is a real, widely-reported problem. The video below shows Edge importing Chrome data and sending site data to Microsoft.