Incognito was never about privacy. It’s about hiding your seach history from your parents or partner or whatever
For buying gifts, for example.
Or masturbating to pornography
Or buying pornography.
Or pornographic gifts.
“Ma’am, I heard it’s your birthday, so I brought this giant package…”
That’s adorable.
and i’m pretty sure the browsers have been quite explicit about this for a long time now, but of course no one bothers to read “This won’t change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google.”
It’s as far as I remember literally always said it’s basically just turning off local history, and not for true privacy. The wording has changed over the years and frankly only become more explicated and clear about that fact.
This is a rare case of google NOT being the problem here. People are misusing a tool that has always been honest about itself.
Google wasn’t really explicit about that until the lawsuit.
Naming it incognito was a mistake. It was always clear to me all incognito is, is a non persistent container to keep your browsing data separate from your regular browsing data. All its hiding is your porn browsing habits from your mom. But of course, the name implies much more.
Good for testing instead of “clearing cache and cookies”
Not a mistake, intentionally deceptive
There were memes about this what feels like at least 10 years ago. Makes perfect sense when you think about it.
from your mom
…did your parents not have friends set up packet sniffers?
“Hey, so now that Chrome has been released, we’re gonna fly up to visit your son and install a packet sniffer on his network!”
Your parents seriously didnt do that, though?
I’m just gently teasing you because I was 29 years old when Chrome came out. My parents would never have even thought to ask someone to install something like that when the internet first came out.
Some ones been caught with his pants down 😏
Incognito mode was always just to hide your local browser history. Think Google would NOT track you?
Do you have Google maps? They know where you are at all times.
User visits Google (logged in)
User visits Google, without cookies, but from the same IP, same user agent, same resolution, same OS, same enabled plugins, same browser version number, same fingerprint (based on al the previous information).
Google, who could this possibly be???
You mean…they know I typed “boobs” into the search bar that one time!? NOOOO!!
Do you have a phone? They know where your toilet is
The know when I’m in a theatre and automatically mute my phone. Admittedly convenient, but also super creepy
I’ve never had this happen. I need to NOT mute my phone next time and test!
Do you have
Google maps?ANY UNMODIFIED GOOGLE CODE OR ANDROID PHONE, TABLET OR CHROMEBOOK IN THE HISTORY OF FOREVER?Then they know where you are at all times. I bet the Pixel users get gold stars. Oneplus have little pluses and custom rom users have 👀.
Oh no! Anyway
You guys are still using Chrome?
Wait… people actually think that incognito means that they don’t record your searches??
I thought everybody knew that all incognito does is preventing your searches from showing up in your search history.
Did anyone actually think that these big tech companies would willingly give you an option to keep your searches private from them?
Hello???
Always assume that everything you do online is being recorded and seen by someone. Unless you’re a master computer wiz or whatever the fuck they call it these days, ALWAYS ASSUME YOUR ACTIVITY ONLINE IS PUBLIC.
This is the consequence of wrapping everything in glossy plastics and dumbed down UI for decades. People don’t want to learn, and even if they do it’s all hidden away behind blobs and bloats.
wtf was anyone expecting
hey before they do that, can i look through their files on me? theres some porn i havent been able to refind anywhere
Wouldn’t that be amazing! I have single frames of good videos stuck in my head that I can never find again.
There is a r/tipofmypenis for that
Maybe someone knows a Lemmy alternative
You’ve gone Incognito. Others who use this device won’t see your activity, so you can browse more privately. This won’t change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google. Downloads, bookmarks and reading list items will be saved.
- Google Chrome
Ah, good find. I just assumed it would have been explicit about it from the start
Yeah, one would have hoped that’d be the case - but apparently not.
I just remembered reading this a while back (start of last year, it seems?), and it honestly felt like a tacit admission of wrong-doing - so they’re likely going to be facing an uphill battle, or at least are expecting one.
Even before that change it’s explicit about it… The change literally did not change any part of the text that tells you who can and are going to track you. They basically went from “this isn’t real privacy” to screaming at your face cause apparently people can’t read and are idiots.
This is a case of users misusing a tool and not reading. At best you can argue that google should have assumed it’s users were stupid beyond measure from the start and had a tos so verbose that only someone missing a brain could misunderstand the point of the tool.
Man, even then it was clear what it was doing, are they supposed to list every single website you visit that might track you?
The Google Incognito tab in any browser clarifies that while it prevents your browsing history from being saved on your device, it does not make your browsing completely private.
Websites you visit, your employer (if on a work network), and your internet service provider (ISP) can still track your online activity.
Hell it even has a link that leads directly to the privacy policy
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/9845881?hl=en-GB
The only thing that shocks me is that no one ever reads it
This was silently changed it used not to have the disclaimer sentence
Silently? It’s been available for developers since January 2024. Major antivirus and security websites reported on it since then, to count:
https://adguard.com/en/blog/incognito-mode-disclaimer-change.html.
It’s been widely reported at least since March 2024. It’s been well over a year since that
Hell even this meme is outdated, as the settlement is widely known since April 2024
So I wouldn’t get why freak out like after a year?
Incognito mode (Chrome) and Private mode (Safari/Firefox) and InPrivate Browsing (Edge/IE) have had disclaimers/explanations for years, Chrome just expanded the disclaimer after settling the suit. Unfortunately for them the judge didn’t know how the internet works any better than the plaintiffs. Winding back the odometer on a car doesn’t mean toll roads don’t know you drove there, it just means “you” have no record of it.
Opera / Vivaldi offer an integrated VPN, but they’re about the only ones other than stuff like the Tor Browser.
I need to check into this, but maybe someone knows.
I assumed that if you’re using incognito and you don’t sign into your Google account, the activity wouldn’t be tied to your Google account. It might be recorded and sent to Google, but anonymously, unless you signed into Google/Gmail/YouTube/whatever, while incognito.
The obvious is that your activity wouldn’t end up on your Internet history in your non-incognito Chrome.
I haven’t used Chrome in years. Brave and firefox, that’s my crowd.
Brave is also Chromium.
Correct. But it is not the same.
Firefox is also a web browser.
Oh sorry, I thought we were making meaningless comparisons.
So even though Brave is made on a Google product, Google doesn’t get the data? Is that what you’re saying? Because Google is such an honest company, sure they have no interest in the data of other browser instances made with their platform. Right?
Yes. That is in fact what I’m saying. Brave has built in blockers for ads, trackers, and cookies. It has a built-in VPN. It has a built-in Tor browser. It’s default search engine is DDG instead of Google. Considering Firefox defaults to Google for searches, you’re likely giving more data to Google through Firefox than you would using Brave.
You clearly have no knowledge on how browser instances work. Just because Brave has built-in stuff like ad blockers doesn’t mean the Chromium platform isn’t Google anymore and Google has no more access to the data. No matter the extra features it has. Using Chromium means sharing data with Google.
Why would using Firefox share more data with Google than a Chromium browser, when Firefox is the only alternative to Chromium, made by a different company and not at all affiliated with Google?
I’m not supporting brave here, but do you have any evidence that the open source Chromium browser sends data to Google in any situation? The way I see it, Chromium is like android AOSP without Google apps, less functional but generally de-googled.
I can’t say I’ve reviewed every line of code in that huge project, but I’d be shocked if the rest of the open source community working on Chromium was willing to have tracking code in it or anything else which phones home to Google, even if the majority of the developers working on the open source project are Google engineers.
Ultimately, both Brave and Firefox are open source, so you can look through the code and verify for yourself whether either browser are doing something unethical.
This ungoogled-chromoim project is probably worth checking out, they maintain a patch set which explicitly removes the only things in chromium which send data to Google, which is pretty much just the web services for search bar autocomplete and DNS pre-fetching etc.
Using Chromium means sharing data with Google.
??? You retarded or something?
It does have that, but don’t for a minute think they actually control chromium. If Google wanted to they could make life very difficult for brave.
Currently brave still has support for manifest v2 but that will eventually be removed and the more brave diverges from the upstream the more work is required to keep it going.
This is gonna be awesome
Ok smartass
https://community.brave.com/t/brave-has-become-malware/510414
https://community.brave.com/t/please-ditch-crypto-adware-crap/600951
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/brave-affiliate-links-autocomplete
https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-browser-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
source: millenial with a search engine
I really don’t have the time, or the interest, to explain it to you; but all of the things you linked are either hyperbole, misinformation, or straight up fabrications; a very small amount of digging will show you why. But hey, I don’t work for Brave or care if anyone uses it or not. At the end of the day, use whatever browser you’re comfortable with.
I really don’t have the time, or the interest, to explain it to you
Then don’t serve a check your ass can’t cash
a very small amount of digging will show you why.
Then a very smalll amount would disprove me. Until then, my point of not installing this poison still stands. Enjoy your willful ignorance. Telling me off took more effort than finding your argument lmao.
You’re doing God’s work in an abandoned universe. Also, I’ve never heard the check one. I’ll be stealing that one.
Next headline: Google promises to delete the Firefox private window data they keep about you
Firefox’s main funding was from Google being their default search engine. Which of course means anything searched in Google (via the URL field) is recorded to the external IP address logs. So unless you are going directly to the website or changed the search engine in Firefox, yes Google was recording said information (or at least compiling the numbers for data analytics) to use for advertising purposes.
changed the search engine in Firefox
Which… takes maximum 1min to do.
or default in any of the forks!
Firefox’s main funding was
was ? I think it still is
Which is why i don’t use safebrowsing but rather a separate profile located (
--profileswitch) in XDG_RUNTIME_DIR.Librewolf
same i use Librewolf nowadays
I use chrome once or twice a year, when I need to figure out if a website problem is my browser or the site.
Ironically, I use incognito for that.
People mistaking incognito mode for a VPN or Tor.
Exactly. My understanding is that you use incognito mode if you don’t want the browser autofilling pornhub.com when you type po in the search bar.
Cmon if you use tor to search about cookie recipes then you are ill, Schizo
Healthy people use tor to hire hitman on their boss after boss fired them, or a hacker to doxx the jerk that downvoted them
If anyone thought that Incognito somehow protected their data from websites or services, then that’s their fault for jumping to that conclusion in the face of everything saying that’s not the case.
Also…
In lawsuits settlement
In meme sentence, words disappear.
That was actually their lawyer’s argument, that “incognito mode” being private was just something people assumed and ran with, not their fault.
I mean, they called it “Incognito”.
Incognito: having one’s true identity concealed
If it doesn’t conceal your identity, then that’s pretty clearly misleading. They’re not selling to experts, the users of this are laypeople. It’s like if you sold a “waterproof phone” and the packaging all made it look like it could withstand water, but then when it got wet it broke and you were like “people just assumed it was waterproof, it’s not our fault”.
Sure experts could tell, and enthusiasts would read the expert opinions on it, but that’s not something you should expect of laypeople considering how it is presented.It IS local incognito. By definition the name is accurate.
The wording on the warning both BEFORE AND AFTER the change says explicitly websites you visit, and anything external WILL still record and track you.
It said BEFORE AND AFTER that ONLY local things such as history omor cookies arnt saved.
It is 100% incognito. For the local browser. It warms BEFORE AND AFTER that it’s not real privacy.
They changed the wording basically from an assumption people will read the examples given on the SAME page as the warning. To having the examples built into the warning.
Basically they assumed their users could read. They were wrong, people can’t read. So they have to scream it now.
“local Incognito” is some real mental gymnastics. If the witness protection program told people they’d help them go incognito, but only hid them from their own families and made it easy for strangers and enemies to find them, would you really consider that be what a reasonable interpretation?
Stop defending people who use shit like huge ToS docs and dark patterns to weasel out of deceptive marketing
Well yeah, that’s the only possible argument that the lawyer could even have.
It’s Google. If you are shocked by this, you deserve to be tracked.
That’s called victim blaming.
But yeah. I really hope people stop using Google products. Google is evil.
That’s called victim blaming.
Be an informed consumer or a sorry one. It’s anyone’s choice.
or not, buy another Mypillow or Nintendo product since you’re all gluttons for punishment.
To be fair it is in this case the victims is more at fault then not for misusing, misunderstanding and not reading the terms of service or explicate use case.
Like this would be like getting mad at your doctor for keeping notes over you and sharing them with other doctors. But not your random friends or strangers.
Incognito mode has said it’s always been local privacy only not that it doesn’t track or record you, nor prevents others from doing so.
It’s just turning off history basically.
Putting the burden on users is a very Google thing to do, my dude.
That’s simply not true. People can’t be expected to know what’s going on under the hood of services designed specifically to simplify things for non-technical users and conceal what’s under the hood.
This is more about knowing Google is an advertising company and makes money from selling your data. Than it is knowing how the application works and what it does under the covers.
Then don’t allow them to use those services without a license. It’s cars or chemicals all over again.
Are people required to know how their car works?
Do people have to understand chemistry to buy gasoline or mercury thermometers?
No. However many things are regulated.
No, not really. There are low bars; this isn’t one of them. This is not something I expect average people who aren’t into technology to anticipate. Nerds like me, yeah. But not the public. Though we’re getting to that point.
Incognito was never about hiding your data from Google, it was always about preventing random websites from getting your data
It doesn’t even do that. All it does is prevent persistent data from being stored from the browsing session (so, no disk cache or browsing history).
Except the part where all incognito tabs/windows share the same session.
We need an incognito mode for the incognito mode.
From day one it is explicitly said it doesn’t do that. It’s literally always been on the main blank tab page right below the warning over what it does.
How they even had to update the wording because of all of this because people didn’t bother to read three bullet points
Glad I don’t use Chrome lol
