InPrivate browsing can be started from any new tab page, by clicking on the Safety menu in the Internet Explorer toolbar, or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-P.

Internet Explorer can also be started in InPrivate browsing mode by adding the -private parameter to the shortcut.

InPrivate Filter Manager is a run-once portable tool to make several changes to InPrivate browsing and InPrivate Filtering in Internet Explorer.

inprivate filter manager

The software offers to enable three features. It can be used to enable InPrivate Filtering, startup Internet Explorer in InPrivate browsing mode, and add ad blocking filters to the browser to block web advertisements.

InPrrivate Filtering needs to be enabled, befor the other two features become available. A small and large ad filter list is available, unfortunately with no further information or details on what they actually block.

A click on the Apply button will make the changes to Internet Explorer, it is advised to close the browser before pressing the Apply button. A System Restore point can be created, to be able to restore the settings at a later time.

InPrivate Filter Manager is available for download at the developer’s Deviant Art page.

Microsoft has introduced a few new features in Internet Explorer 8 including the inPrivate privacy feature but also architectural changes that made Internet Explorer 8 a multi-process browser. Microsoft has created a handful of command line arguments for Internet Explorer 8 that can be useful under certain circumstances.

Probably the most interesting is the ability to start Internet Explorer 8 directly in InPrivate mode by using the -private argument. This can be combined with the url argument that will open a specified url directly in Internet Explorer 8. The argument to open a specific url is simply that url, for example http://www.ghacks.net/. You can add the two parameters to any Internet Explorer 8 shortcut so that you start the web browser immediately in inPrivate mode and the specified url.

A right-click and the selection of Properties should open the Internet Explorer Properties window which contains a Target form in the Shortcut tab.

Simply append -private http://www.ghacks.net/ at the end of the line. The full line should look like the following afterwards:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -private http://www.ghacks.net/

There are two additional command line arguments available for Internet Explorer 8 that might come in handy. The -k argument starts Internet Explorer 8 in Kiosk mode which has been designed primarily for presentations. It will start the web browser without toolbars and status bar.

The final parameter is -extoff which will start Internet Explorer 8 without extensions which is useful for troubleshooting purposes.

Which leads to the closing question: Does anyone know how to always launch Internet Explorer in InPrivate mode. The shortcut works fine if Internet Explorer 8 is started from the icon but it does not help if the user clicks on a link in another program like Microsoft Outlook.