Enable PUA Protection in Microsoft Edge

Prajwal Desai
Posted by Prajwal Desai
Enable PUA Protection in Microsoft Edge

In this post I will show you how to enable PUA protection in Microsoft Edge. By enabling the PUA protection in Edge, you can protect against potentially unwanted applications (PUAs).

Be it your laptop or a computer that’s the part of a network, you don’t want an unwanted application running. Potentially unwanted applications (PUAs) are not virus or malware, but these applications are not good for your computer.

One such example of PUA is a software that tries to evade the detection by antivirus. Such pieces of software are also known as Evasion Software. The other examples of Potentially unwanted applications includes software products that load ads while you are browsing, software programs that install other programs showing it as trusted.

Such pieces of software can cause many issues and can also affect the performance of your system. You don’t want any PUA’s running in the domain, as the IT will need more effort to clean them up later.

If you are curious to know how PUAs are classified and detected, I recommend reading how Microsoft identifies malware and potentially unwanted applications.

All the well known antivirus products detect Potentially unwanted applications (PUAs) and Windows Defender is one of them. However, Microsoft Edge can also detect PUAs and can protect against potentially unwanted applications.

When you enable PUA protection in Microsoft Edge, it blocks the downloads of the low-reputation apps that might cause unexpected behaviors. It is safe to enable the PUA protection in Edge, and you can manually enable it (if it is not enabled by default).

I am guessing that the newer versions of Edge (version 92 and above) has the PUA protection enabled by default. If you don’t see it enabled, you can manually enable the PUA protection.

Enable PUA protection in Microsoft Edge

The steps to enable PUA protection in Microsoft Edge are as follows :-

  • In your Edge browser, select the ellipses, and then choose Settings.
  • Select Privacy, search, and services.
  • Under the Security section, turn on Block potentially unwanted apps.
  • This blocks downloads of low-reputation apps that might cause unexpected behaviors.
Enable PUA protection in Microsoft Edge
Enable PUA protection in Microsoft Edge

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Prajwal Desai
Posted by Prajwal Desai
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Prajwal Desai is a Microsoft MVP in Intune and SCCM. He writes articles on SCCM, Intune, Windows 365, Windows Server, Windows 11, WordPress and other topics, with the goal of providing people with useful information.