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There's a difference between Signed out, and Incognito (no cookies)! + People generally tend to miss the point that Incognito doesn't prevent sharing the IP of
by harshvladha 8y ago
There's a difference between Signed out, and Incognito (no cookies)!
+ People generally tend to miss the point that Incognito doesn't prevent sharing the IP of the user.
+ I think DuckDuckGo's study missed out using VPN in their analysis. i.e., SignedIn vs Incognito vs (Incognito+VPN)
- Kalium 8y ago> There's a difference between Signed out, and Incognito (no cookies)! Is there? I was under the impression that Incognito and its cousins generally still accept and preserve cookies for the duration of the temporary session. This means that for this purpose, there isn't really a difference.
- gfo 8y agoIncognito is supposed to give you a completely clean session that doesn't carry over the cache, cookies, etc. from your normal browsing context. In this study, my understanding is that result personalization carried over from a normal browsing session into the clean, Incognito session, likely due to IP correlation or possibly through User-Agent strings. So while Incognito has its own context that is wiped once the session has ended, the result personalization didn't need anything saved in the browser to recognize who you are.
- grawprog 8y agoHmmm I wonder if using a second browser, maybe based on a different renderer, in incognito with a different user-agent set up would be enough or if it would still get enough info. At that point it would still have your outgoing ip address at least is there anything else they could still match to a signed in session? I guess you could also route all traffic in the unsigned in session through a VPN too.
- antsar 8y agoQuite a few variables are used to track you, many of which do not change between different browsers. Try this: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/ Specifically, check out the "fingerprinting" details.
- snowwrestler 8y agoIncognito will accept new cookies but to my understanding it won't serve existing cookies that pre-date the Incognito session. A fresh Incognito window is supposed to be like you cleared your history and cookies before opening it, and then cleared them again when you close it. But yeah, in between the browser acts as normal. In a normal (not Incognito) browser window, you don't have to be logged into Google for Google to read Google cookies. Logging out doesn't make you anonymous; they still know who you are.
- Bartweiss 8y agoThe "even in Incognito" part of this is certainly the biggest result I see. And I agree on the study limitation; attempting to clean up localization effects after the fact doesn't feel like a strong fix. It should be possible to isolate device and location effects by using multiple devices in one location, then VPN-ing one device to multiple 'locations'. One thing that caught my eye was Google's response about Incognito: > The company did confirm that it does not personalize results for incognito searches using signed-in search history, and it also confirmed that it does not personalize results for the Top Stories row or the News tab in search. Since it's a corporate reply, the standard question is what's not present: a statement that Incognito isn't personalized, or isn't personalized beyond device type and location. Perhaps I'm too cynical, but "we don't personalize using X" parses as "we do personalize in other ways".
- frandroid 8y agoGoogle definitely personalizes based on geoIP location, that's not exactly a secret.
- garysahota93 8y agoIt's not a secret, but I don't think we're doing enough to keep this on the forefront of people's minds. Every time I hear this, I am shocked! Only to then remember I already knew this but somehow let it slide...
- singingboyo 8y agoI mean, what's the difference between this and customizing billboard ads based on where the billboard is? IMO the issue is not google using IP-based location info. The issue (if there really is one) is people assuming/believing the internet hides their location.
- garysahota93 8y agohmm, that's a very interesting point. I guess that famous saying of "if you're not paying, then YOU are the product" kinda falls into play here, huh?
- jakelazaroff 8y agoEven with a VPN it's possible to somewhat reliably fingerprint browsers, no? You can check user agent, screen size, installed plug-ins, etc.