<story><title>Google engineers joked about how incognito mode isn&apos;t incognito</title><url>https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-engineers-joked-incognito-mode</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m quite familiar with this whole lawsuit, and I still think it&amp;#x27;s total and complete bullshit (and, to be clear, I have &lt;i&gt;huge&lt;/i&gt; concerns about Google&amp;#x27;s tracking and surveillance).&lt;p&gt;Incognito Mode basically puts you in a mode as if you had installed a fresh, new instance of the browser every time, e.g. none of your past cookies can be accessed by any websites. Websites, though, can still use analytics APIs, including things like Google Analytics, to track you &lt;i&gt;within that Incognito Mode session&lt;/i&gt;. They may also be able to correlate you by, for example, matching your IP address. And, to be clear, the Incognito Mode new window has always made this clear.&lt;p&gt;I can still be really concerned about Google&amp;#x27;s overall tracking and also point out this lawsuit is a bullshit money grab from lawyers hoping for a lotto payout.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ericmcer</author><text>I always felt this was obvious, what did people think incognito mode was? It literally says &amp;quot;Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity.&amp;quot; when you open an incognito window. It doesn&amp;#x27;t claim to be a VPN or anything.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google engineers joked about how incognito mode isn&apos;t incognito</title><url>https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-engineers-joked-incognito-mode</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m quite familiar with this whole lawsuit, and I still think it&amp;#x27;s total and complete bullshit (and, to be clear, I have &lt;i&gt;huge&lt;/i&gt; concerns about Google&amp;#x27;s tracking and surveillance).&lt;p&gt;Incognito Mode basically puts you in a mode as if you had installed a fresh, new instance of the browser every time, e.g. none of your past cookies can be accessed by any websites. Websites, though, can still use analytics APIs, including things like Google Analytics, to track you &lt;i&gt;within that Incognito Mode session&lt;/i&gt;. They may also be able to correlate you by, for example, matching your IP address. And, to be clear, the Incognito Mode new window has always made this clear.&lt;p&gt;I can still be really concerned about Google&amp;#x27;s overall tracking and also point out this lawsuit is a bullshit money grab from lawyers hoping for a lotto payout.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bspammer</author><text>The new page tab for incognito mode literally says&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Your activity might still be visible to:
        * Websites that you visit
        * Your employer or school
        * Your Internet service provider
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I know people don&amp;#x27;t read warnings, but really I don&amp;#x27;t know what they could do to make it more clear.</text></comment>