IE 8 inPrivate Filtering mode can be set to on/enabled by default by doing the following:

1. Open IE 8.
2. Click on the InPrivate Filtering button in the status bar (lower right) to enable inPrivate Filtering.
3. Leaving your IE 8 browser open, go to and click on your Windows Start button.  Click on the “Run..” button, found below the Search button. (this is for Windows XP users.  I don’t know yet how to open the Registry Editor on Windows Vista, since I don’t have Windows Vista)
4. type “regedit” in the run box.  Hit “Ok”.
5. The Windows Registry Editor tool will open.
6. In the tool, open this folder:  My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Safety\PrivacIE
7. Once this folder is open, click on:  Edit > New > DWORD Value
8. Give the new value that appears this name:  ”StartMode”.  Hit enter
9. Right click on the new StartMode, choose “Modify”.
10. In the field “Value Data”, type “1″.  Hit “Ok”.
11. That’s it.  Close the Registry Editor.  Close and restart your IE 8 browser, you’ll see that inPrivate Filtering is on by default.

IE8’s most notable new feature is “inPrivate Filtering”:  this is a domain filtering service that is very easily turned on by a button at the bottom of the window, in the status bar.   With one click, the browser blocks content served by third party domains.

In other words, you read content at latimes.com, and latimes.com tries to show you ads that are served by advertising.com.  The advertising.com ads will be blocked when you turn on inPrivate Filtering.   Not right away.  The default setting is that you have to visit 10 websites that call ads from advertising.com before ads are blocked.  If you turn on inPrivate Filtering whenever you surf, then the most popular adservers and analytics domains will quickly reach 10 hits and be blocked.  And they’ll be blocked every time you turn on inPrivate Filtering.

-Colin