Incognito Mode Was Never Truly Private, But You Don’t Need To Worry (Anymore) About What Google Collected
Google always painted Incognito Mode to keep your browsing activity hidden, at least from your history and the browser itself. But alas, that wasn’t the reality of things. The only effective advantage of Incognito Mode was that it stopped your browsing history and forms from saving any information. However, Google didn’t properly disclose the data that they actually were collecting.
Of course, this is extremely worrying, considering the kinds of things that most people get up to when they feel the need to use a private browsing mode. Fortunately, thanks to a class action lawsuit filed back in 2020, things will finally come to a close. Google is going to get rid of all the data (“billions of data points”) that was “improperly collected” from users, which is a very soothing outcome to hear.
In addition to this, the tech giant is going to make changes to the home screen you encounter when you open Incognito Mode, to make it clear what data will not be saved. Third-party cookies might be used even when incognito, they’re going to be blocked by default unless you choose to enable them manually.
Google claims that the information improperly collected was never individualized in any way and is merely “old technical data” at this point. Whether that’s true or not, we can’t tell, but people will feel a lot safer knowing exactly what isn’t private when they’re up to no good on the internet.
Google Execs Knew That The Extent Of Incognito Mode’s Privacy Could Be Misunderstood
One interesting thing that the class action lawsuit was able to unearth was some internal communication between Google executives; particularly Sundar Pichai, the CEO, and Lorraine Twohill, the chief marketing officer.
The CMO expressed concerns to the CEO regarding Incognito Mode being referred to as “private” since it could end up “exacerbating known misconceptions” regarding how discreet that browsing mode really is.
We are limited in how strongly we can market Incognito because it’s not truly private, thus requiring really fuzzy, hedging language that is almost more damaging…
Lorraine Twohill, Chief Marketing Officer at Google
Regardless, it’s great that Incognito Mode in Google Chrome has been exposed for what it truly is. This doesn’t mean I’ll stop using it, but when I do, I’ll know that I’m not as hidden as I previously thought I was, and that alone is fine.
