Turning on any browser’s incognito mode gives the idea that browsing will be private and no usage data will be collected, but this is not true: Google Chrome still records most of your usage information. And Google was forced to admit this after a privacy lawsuit; Request that provides a great balance for the user: Google agrees to delete everything recorded during private sessions.

When a browser function is called private browsing or private browsing, it is logical to think that nothing traveling between the servers and our device is recorded by the browser and the company that developed it, right? No: No one was surprised when Google admitted this Chrome’s incognito mode is anything but private. In fact, user tracking, browsing data logging, and other information passing through Google servers remain there. Now.

Google agrees to delete all data saved in incognito mode

Current incognito mode in Google Chrome with usage reporting and cookie blocking by default

A lawsuit filed against Google in 2020 in San Francisco, California, alleged that Chrome’s incognito mode and its false sense of privacy. As the plaintiffs reported, Google continued to record browsing data regardless of the mode the user used; although he always believed his wanderings were special. According to the lawsuit, as the first change, Google changed the warning message given when switching from normal mode to special mode in Chrome. Now agree to go further.

Last Monday, April 1, the agreement between Google and the plaintiffs became known: the company admits that the only difference between the use of normal mode and incognito mode is that the browser provides only a certain level of privacy at the client level. Chrome wasn’t saving session data on the device; All tracking is recorded on Google servers.

As reflected in court records, once an agreement is reached between the parties, Google is determined that Chrome’s incognito mode will look the way it was always meant to be: a private way to browse. This agreement is reflected in the following changes:

• Google Chrome will provide information about what it collects and what it does not collect in incognito mode. The notification is now available on existing browsers, both mobile and desktop.
• Google Chrome should block third-party cookies by default in incognito mode. Currently the selector is visible and marked as standard when activating that mode.
• Google will not track user’s incognito mode. As a result of the lawsuit, it was revealed that Google was recording people browsing privately. Google agrees to remove this flagging so that websites do not know that you are browsing in incognito mode.
• Google must delete billions of data that Chrome secretly saves. This concerns all private sessions recorded by Google since the lawsuit was filed.

Many of the changes reflected in the lawsuit settlement already appear in existing browsers. Now Google needs to delete all recordings saved during private sessions, and Chrome finally has an incognito mode that lives up to its name. According to Google’s president, José Castañeda (testimony collected by The Verge), These recordings were always anonymous.:

“We never associate data with users using incognito mode. We are happy to remove outdated technical data that has never been associated with an individual and is not used for personalization purposes in any way.”

Cover image | DALL-E 3 edited on ChatGPT

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