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Incognito was never about [avoiding] tracking. Its goal was to have an ephemeral session which is discarded at the end, no local history saved. Trackers work th
by WhyNotHugo 3y ago
Incognito was never about [avoiding] tracking. Its goal was to have an ephemeral session which is discarded at the end, no local history saved. Trackers work the same as usual.
What happened was that people mistook it for being a “private” form of browsing with no tracking and Google never corrected them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dmvdoug 3y agoSilence is consent. Edit: meaning, Google’s silent lack of correction shows (to me) that they consented to that interpretation.
- zilti 3y agoOpen an incognito tab and read what it says.
- lioeters 3y agoNo wonder people misunderstand when browsers call it "Incognito mode" or "private window", which implies there's some kind of anonymity and privacy. Perhaps it could be renamed to "temporary window" or "ephemeral mode" to communicate its purpose better.
- EasyMark 3y agoI know a ton of people who have no idea what ephemeral means along with a large overlap with those who don't know what incognito does, so temporary mode would be much better.
- Hasu 3y ago> What happened was that people mistook it for being a “private” form of browsing with no tracking and Google never corrected them Every time you open an incognito window in Chrome there's an explanation of what can and can't track you. It's been there for years.
- turquoisevar 3y agoYou make it sounds like users were just making assumptions based on nothing. Google meanwhile tells users “Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity. However, downloads, bookmarks and reading list items will be saved.” This creates an expectation, and expectation that might differ from person to person based on what they consider “privately” but an expectation nonetheless.