Using Invoke-Webrequest in PowerShell 3.0 spawns a Windows Security Warning

internet-explorer powershell powershell-3.0
Jack Petri picture Jack Petri · Mar 4, 2013 · Viewed 12k times · Source

When using the following code in PowerShell 3.0

PS> $data = Invoke-Webrequest -Uri stackoverflow.com
PS> $data.ParsedHtml.getElementsByTagName("div")

I get this warning:

Windows Security Warning - To allow this website to provide information personalized for you, will you allow it to put a small file (called a cookie) on your computer?

I would really like to suppress this message or add code to handle cookies, so the code could be scheduled.

I have tried trusting the site in IE allowing cookies and even lowering the "User Account Control Settings" but with no avail.

Answer

Taylor Gibb picture Taylor Gibb · Apr 1, 2014 
$data = Invoke-WebRequest http://stackoverflow.com -UseBasicParsing

It looks like an Internet Explorer prompt, this is because under the hood Invoke-WebRequest is probably using Internet Explorer to parse the DOM. When you use the -UseBasicParsing parameter you instructing PowerShell to use its own parser. For some reason, it also seems to hide the cookies prompt.

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