How Private Is Chrome’s Incognito Mode Really? Even Google employees complain

Browsing in Incognito Mode gives us the feeling that our time on the web is going to be quite private, and indeed it is what any user would expect. However, the truth is quite different, at least when we do it for Google Chrome.

It’s no secret that Google makes a living from collecting our data to display contextual advertising. It’s no secret. And in the case of the tech firm’s browser’s Incognito Mode, it has little incognito and doesn’t really protect you from much.

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Actually, this is something that has been known for a long time, however, what is new is that not even the company’s employees are very satisfied.

So much so, that the staff members themselves have been complaining for some time about the confusing terms of ‘Incognito Mode’, which for them do not clearly explain what this technology does.

Even, according to the Xataka technology portal, Lorraine Twohill, director of marketing at Google, wrote an email to Sundar Pichai, CEO of the company, to ask him to “make the Incognito Mode really private”.

The message has been revealed as part of a lawsuit filed against Google for this issue. Twohill explained to his boss that “We are limited in how strongly we can market [el Modo] Incognito because it’s not truly private.”

Incognito mode. (Photo: Getty Images)

On the other hand, in a 2018 chat an employee is known to share a report showing that users don’t really understand how Incognito mode works and don’t know that it doesn’t protect their privacy. So the Mountain View employee asked to “stop calling him Incognito and stop using an icon with a spy” as an official image.

Google does warn of these conditions in its Incognito Mode

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Google’s support in the face of criticism is that, when opening a new window in Incognito Mode in your browser, users are shown what this tool does and does not do, the detail is that to know the specifications well, you have to click on the “More information” link.

In a section of said link, it is made clear that in this mode information is still collected in an identical way to a normal browsing mode. Under the title “What does incognito mode not do” it is explained that, among other things, the browser does not do the following:

“Prevent websites you visit from serving ads based on your activity during an incognito session. Once you close all incognito windows, websites won’t be able to show you ads based on the activity you’ve done during the closed session.”

What does Google’s Incognito Mode protect us from?

The idea of ​​​​Incognito Mode is to prevent the data of our activity from being saved on our device or in an account in which we have not logged in. For example, if we want to buy a gift for a family member who uses our same device and, obviously, we don’t want them to find out about our search or to go unnoticed before embarrassing searches, that’s why for many people it’s simply known as ‘porn mode’.

Source: Elcomercio