The next version of the Microsoft Internet Explorer  browser will include four new features to protect your privacy. The company has confirmed the following privacy enhancements:

• InPrivate™ Browsing lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data
• Delete Browsing History helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited websites.
• InPrivate™ Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it
• InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow.

To browse in private, users are required to launch an InPrivate Browsing window to activate it, keep it open for the duration of their browsing session, and close the window when they are done.

To prevent sites from tracking you and gaining visibility into your browsing history, users can incorporate InPrivate Blocking to block content and prevent communication to sites. Users can manually block or allow or obtain information about the third party content directly from the site by clicking the “More information from this website” link. When users browse with InPrivate, IE automatically blocks sites that have “seen” them across more than ten sites. IE will only record data for InPrivate Blocking when you are in “regular” browsing mode; no browsing history is retained while browsing InPrivate.

The browser is currently in beta and is expected to be released this year.