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Stupid question, but can Google (or Bing) associate what you searched for or which link you clicked in incognito searches? I've always wondered how truly incogn
by rajathagasthya 10y ago
Stupid question, but can Google (or Bing) associate what you searched for or which link you clicked in incognito searches? I've always wondered how truly incognito they are.
- Mahn 10y agoWell of course. The only thing the browser incognito mode guarantees is that no local data will stay around (cookies, cache, history, etc), but beyond that there's nothing stopping Google or any other online service from collecting and extrapolating data, even if you are not logged in.
- Andrex 10y agoEven without cookies, etc. your browser and computer basically act as a "fingerprint" of sorts anyways. They have your IP address, resolution, OS, browser engine, etc. To avoid this you could try stripping out the user agent, changing the size of your browser window and using a VPN (I believe that's what the Tor browser basically does, anyways.)
- dredmorbius 10y agoIf that's your concern, run searches through a Tor browser and Tor connection. The default Tor browser is stripped of identifying information. The Tor conection means your traffic is bundled with many, many others users. The downside I've found, for Google search, is that Google subjects all, or at least all I've run, Tor search requests to a CAPTCHA request. Torbot and Torfox on Android get stuck on this, and it's consequently impossible to run Google Web search over Tor on Android. So I use DDG, which is my default search anyway. DDG doesn't track users or history.