People mistaking incognito mode for a VPN or Tor.
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.
There were memes about this what feels like at least 10 years ago. Makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Good for testing instead of “clearing cache and cookies”
Some ones been caught with his pants down 😏
Glad I don’t use Chrome lol
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.
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!
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
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
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
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.
This was silently changed it used not to have the disclaimer sentence
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.
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?
If you care about your privacy, don’t use products from a company whose entire business model is built on invading your privacy.
yeah im part of that class action and i get so many text asking about it
wtf was anyone expecting
You guys are still using Chrome?
Incognito was never about privacy. It’s about hiding your seach history from your parents or partner or whatever
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.
For buying gifts, for example.
That’s adorable.
Or masturbating to pornography
Or buying pornography.
Or pornographic gifts.
“Ma’am, I heard it’s your birthday, so I brought this giant package…”
Things do the opposite of what their name says they do. We’ve been in 1984/F451 bizarro world for a while, now.
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?
This is gonna be awesome
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.
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.
Librewolf
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.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.
“He’s the one who knocks!”
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
I don’t believe for a second that they are actually going to delete any data they stole from users.
UPDATE disgustingly_detailed_data SET deleted = true WHERE inkognito = true;Oops offshore backup mysteriously occurred.
The raw data might be purged but no one talks about the ML modal that google trained with that data.
Of course they will! First you make a copy, then you delete the copy. Contractual terms satisfied.
To be fair nothing was stolen, the lawyers even admitted as much.
This is a user error problem caused by the moron in a hurry problem.
The warning on incognito mode both before and after the change was very explicit that it was local only. It was intended for people sharing a computer, not for privacy to anything you searched, external websites, etc
Below the warning even had examples over exactly what was and was not saved with it explicitly saying that external websites would be able to track and save your data including Google.
The change was to add that warning list to the initial warning itself because Google had assumed people would read the entire page. They did not.
Which means that those morons in a hurry who only skimmed misunderstood what incognito mode was for. Did not read the use case, the warning, the TOs, the manual, or any other information provided both explicitly or implicitly.
Hell even parted the argument of the lawyers was that this is a user issue and that Google had a responsibility to prevent people who were ignorant or in a hurry from misunderstanding. And while they made a good faith effort, it could have been better. Google being the large company is taking the fall for this more than anything but it is at the end of the day a user issue.
