It is what it is

"He's the one who knocks!"

Incognito was never about privacy. It's about hiding your seach history from your parents or partner or whatever

For buying gifts, for example.
- 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."

Incognito was literally only good for opening a second session without you logged in. It did zero for privacy. Even their disclaimer said so.

Incognito, you mean porn mode?
- Its a moot point once you sign into your Facebook account to "share with friends"
firefox containers are amazing for this
- Firefox -p "Spanky"
- Except it only keeps cookies separated, history is shared over all containers.

You guys are still using Chrome?

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

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"
There were memes about this what feels like at least 10 years ago. Makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Not a mistake, intentionally deceptive
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!”

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

Google quietly updates Chrome’s incognito warning in wake of tracking lawsuit
- Ah, good find. I just assumed it would have been explicit about it from the start
- Man, even then it was clear what it was doing, are they supposed to list every single website you visit that might track you?

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

Um was this surprising to anyone? I think we all assumed that this was the case no???

Doesn't it specifically say on a new incognito tab that this doesn't protect against sites or service providers from gathering information....and only stops you from storing local information (history, cookies, etc)? Do people actually think that incognito is adding privacy protection?
- That was actually a result of this issue, where Google placed misleading statements in incognito and then proceeded to actively go around them.
- It has somewhat of a privacy protection because it's incapable of keeping cookies. The bar is in hell, but it passed it.
- Maybe I read it wrong but (to me) the meme makes it sound like Google's taking the local data (that's supposed to be forgotten, once you close the browser window) and sending it over to Google for them to, I dunno, run analysis on.
  If they're saying that Google sites (like YouTube, Google search, etc.) were collecting data when I visit them (as, unfortunately, sites do), then I'd say, "Well, duh;" but this makes it seem like they were exporting your local data off to their cloud which, like, they could obviously, technically do but wouldn't very much be in the spirit of how Incognito mode was portrayed.

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.

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://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/01/google-changes-wording-for-incognito-browsing-in-chrome
  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
  https://www.engadget.com/google-says-it-will-destroy-browsing-data-collected-from-chromes-incognito-mode-172121598.html
  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.
Librewolf
Which is why i don't use safebrowsing but rather a separate profile located (--profile switch) in XDG_RUNTIME_DIR.
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.

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.

Oh man, I envy your opinion of other people. Hold onto that as long as you can.
You vastly over estimate the average end user, half of them think using basic linux terminal commands constitutes hacking lel.

That's called victim blaming.
But yeah. I really hope people stop using Google products. Google is evil.
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.
- Then don't allow them to use those services without a license. It's cars or chemicals all over again.
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.

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

Things do the opposite of what their name says they do. We've been in 1984/F451 bizarro world for a while, now.

If you care about your privacy, don't use products from a company whose entire business model is built on invading your privacy.

Glad I don't use Chrome lol

But they still won’t they’ll just make a more hidden copy

Am I the only one who only used incognito by accident when intending to select "open in new tab" from the context menu?

I use it to access the same site with different logins at the same time, or to let someone else log in to a service temporarily using my device
- If this is something you do often, you might consider Firefox with the multi-account containers extension: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
  It allows unique/isolated profiles on a per-tab basis.
  I've found it great for work, for the many things that require me to be logged into both the me@example.com and me@example.onmicrosoft.com accounts simultanously, to manage MS 365 things. But restricting social media to an isolated profile, multiple Google/Microsoft/whatever accounts, these are all possible.
It's great for testing a site when you're not sure whether the issue is because you're logged in or there's some cached data.

yeah im part of that class action and i get so many text asking about it

So this is why the weird shite I look up in incognito comes up when I search something without incognito mode.

So that's why I got advertisement for weird sextoys on Wish...

No thats because of the dream monitoring. Don't be silly.

People really need to learn about VPNs and advertising ID numbers and also how your ISP is selling your activity

fight back?

I don’t care or think they didn’t track that, they don’t ruin my algorithm with those searches which is all I really care about.

I basically just use it to look up whatever new crazy person my whack job mother was sending me some antivax propaganda from to confirm they’re the type of quack I assume them to be.