Do web browser private modes protect user privacy or just give the appearance of privacy?
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It protects a little but not much. Google still knows what you searched for, your internet provider still knows what websites you visited, etc.
If you want actual anonymous status you need a VPN
Incognito just doesn’t record your browsing history, but your internet provider still has a record for a certain length of time. If you use incognito plus a VPN you’re doing better. Google can probably still pull out what you searched for some period of time though if they really wanted to, like if a government asked them for some reason. Or the government could force the VPN company to tell them. But if you’re having a government ask your VPN what you’ve been searching for, you really been searching things you shouldn’t have lol. So get a VPN and Bob’s your uncle for all (most) intents and purposes.
incognito mode just means nothing is stored _locally_. as others have said your isp still knows what you did, the websites you visited may or may not record your visit (but they cannot put cookies on your computer), routers between your computer and the websites you visited may still have a record of your traffic passing through
in short, private/incognito mode only protects your from people accessing your computer physically
Turning a browser’s “incognito mode” is basically setting up a new place for the browser to store things (like history, cookies, and other cache things), and promising to delete that space once you close the browser. So anything that tracks based on your local device will be (relatively) private, because the you that is using it didn’t exist beforehand and won’t exist afterwards (at least by your computer’s perception). Of course, if you (or something malicious) save(s) anything outside of that temporary place or if something goes wrong with the deleting step, then that data will stick around.
But that *local* word is a big issue. Your internet use goes through a bunch of different places and devices every time you do anything online, so if any of those places keeps track of what you are doing then it will still remember everything you are doing no matter what your local device keeps track of.
Unless you think there’s a real chance of some third party getting access to your local files from your device (such as a shared computer), the biggest use of incognito mode is to log in to the same website with different accounts or to reset a website’s algorithms to the default. Any sense of privacy beyond the first case is exaggerated and is not enough to stop your ISP from giving the FBI agent with a warrant the list of sites/download sizes you’ve used, or your account owner a list of websites that hit certain keywords that you’ve visited.
All it does is make it like you didn’t search anything. You’re still unprotected and get tracked the same. It’sonly cool because your wife find all the cuck porn you watch.
The privacy modes of browsers have a few effects that increase privacy, mostly by not saving data between sessions:
* Cookies and local storage are deleted when the tab or window is closed.
* Browsing history will be deleted when the tab or window is closed.
The first means websites cannot track you across sessions, unless you log in to their site. The sites will still be able to track activity you do on their site, such as submitting a search request – they will just have more trouble linking it to other activity on the site.
Both of the two means that somebody with access to the computer used will have more difficulty figuring out what you were doing. It will not completely prevent it, but does make it harder.
Anybody with access to the computer prior to your browsing can definitely capture what you were doing. Those with access afterwards might be able to recover the browsing data with the correct software.
People between you and the remote server, such as your ISP, generally can see some parts of your activity. HTTPS and VPNs drastically mitigate this part.
Incognito defends against two, and only two things:
* Your browser extensions. Incognito disables them, unless you expressly give them permission to run in Incognito mode anyway.
* Nosey people who physically use your computer when you are away. All traces of what sites you visited are wiped from your device when you close the Incognito window.
It does essentially nothing else.
If you trust all of your extensions (or don’t have any), and you don’t share a computer with anyone and do not expect it to be logged into by anyone else, Incognito doesn’t accomplish much.
Incognito provides privacy against other users of that same computer, but provides no privacy towards other elements in the data chain.
Consider it as a very convenient way of clearing your saved data after using the internet – incognito mode deletes your browser history, cookies and other saved data so that the next user cannot see what you were doing.
Unfortunately to look at your chosen websites in the first place, all of that information needs to be routed through your ISP and various servers, and deleting the saved data on your browser will not prevent them from having seen that data as it was transmitted to you. So your ISP will still have the ability to view what you were looking at.
So incognito is great for hiding your viewing from those your share a computer with (whether because you were trying too but then a secret present like incognito was originally advertised for, or looking at… other things is up to you), but should you be doing something properly illegal and law enforcement become involved, it will not protect you from your deleted history being requested from an ISP or similar.
The point of incognito mode is to stop things being saved to your browser history and autocomplete and so on. Basically, if you want to look at porn, but you’re on a shared computer, use incognito mode.
It doesn’t stop Google or your ISP tracking your activity. If you do anything illegal they’ll still know.
chrome is by google, the main seller of infos in the world, so..
of all the incognito mode browsers, its the least working one.
even with inco mode you will still leave a lot of traces btw, there is no way to be really incognito, even with tor.
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