• Eggyhead@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      48
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      The name is blatantly misleading. The very definition of the term “incognito” means having one’s true identity concealed, so I can’t blame anyone with comprehension of the English language for being misled at a glance. However, like anyone else here, I do not expect this to lead to any actual progress toward more privacy.

      • Philolurker@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        49
        ·
        1 year ago

        It opens a separate session in the browser and prevents saving any cookies, history or other state locally when you close it. Doesn’t change a blessed thing on the other end of the connection.

        • miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          30
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Most browsers even tell the users that, very clearly. I hate Google with a burning passion, but this lawsuit is just dumb.

          • jeansburger@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            To be fair most of the class action lawsuits these days are “dumb.” It’s important to still fight these or else nothing will change. It’s a check valve on businesses and the government to prevent them from being completely unaccountable and harming entire populations of people.

            They named the feature incorrectly, then they only updated the language and explained it properly after people got in trouble or hurt because they thought it meant something different. That to me sounds like malice or at least negligence to me.

            Yes the suit sounds dumb initially. However if you think about how the average person might have been misled this does sound like Google needs to be held accountable.

        • dan1101@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Also in the past I’ve observed that the Google indexing bot will visit a site right after a Chrome user visits the site. So if Googlebot knows nothing about abc123.com and then a Chrome user visits it, then suddenly Googlebot is crawling the site. I wonder if that happens when the Chrome user is in incognito mode?

      • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Adding to what the other person said.

        The main purpose of it is if you’re sharing the computer with someone else. You don’t need to worry about your kink searches showing up in the search history (or whatever you don’t want other people in the household to know about).

    • DauntingFlamingo@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Does it not add to your history so you can search sketchy or embarrassing things? I never thought they weren’t tracking my rewatches of BLACK MEAT ANAL HEAT 6, just that the phrase wouldn’t show up in my search history or recently visited. I’m not going to NOT rewatch a classic like that, but I don’t need it popping up in my history when I’m about to give a presentation

    • imecth@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      This isn’t about every website tracking you regardless. Chrome kept logging browsing information even in incognito mode.

      • Spotlight7573@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        To be more accurate: Google websites kept logging browsing information, even when using Chrome’s Incognito mode.

        Ideally, a website shouldn’t be able to detect whether the browser is in private browsing/incognito modes at all. We’ve already seen news sites using the ability to detect private browsing to enforce paywalls for example.