this seems a little strange....

[XWrench3]

so i did a little "cleaning up" tonight on my computer. i ran Superantispyware, which went normally, then i ran Ccleaner. and for the most part, that went normally as well. until i went to clear out the 500mb of junk that had accumulated. when i pressed the "clean" button, i got a pop up window saying that in order to remove the junk from Edge, it would need to close it. i can not remember the last time i used the Edge browser, and i certainly have not used it in the last week. and i shut my computer completely off last night. does Windows 10 automatically start and open Edge upon starting the machine? no one, and i mean NO ONE (except me obviously) is allowed to use this computer. so i know someone else hasn't used it.

 

[carnageX]

Could be using it in the background for things as the internal web browser; could be that CCleaner is registering the system process as running that's registered along with Edge.

 

[tehnokraat]

so ... does Windows 10 automatically start and open Edge upon starting the machine?

Edge runs always in the background, if You push the Start button to start Windows 10. All Windows processes using the Edge, not Internet Explorer.

 

[XWrench3]

i have 4 browsers on my machine. more to try them out than anything. but the one i use most of the time is Mozilla Firefox. so i suppose that the Edge browser running in the background is what is feeding all of my personal data back to Microsoft huh?

 

[carnageX]

i have 4 browsers on my machine. more to try them out than anything. but the one i use most of the time is Mozilla Firefox. so i suppose that the Edge browser running in the background is what is feeding all of my personal data back to Microsoft huh?

Yes and no - possibly using the Edge engine behind the scenes to make the web service calls and such to send/receive data.

And there's no personal data being sent unless you turn those options on under Settings -> Privacy.