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No surprises here; "In December, Google settled a $5 billion privacy lawsuit, which alleged that it spied on people who used Chrome's private browsing — or 'Incognito' — mode".
In reality all Google's privacy mode does is ensure that none of your browsing history, cookies, site data or any information entered in forms is saved on your device thus protecting your privacy from any other user on the same device. That's it!
"The privacy lawsuit claimed tracking users in "Incognito" mode "allows Google to offer better, more targeted, advertisements to users".
It argued that this was "the core of Google's business", with the tech company generating billions in revenue from its advertising business each year, and that Google sold data that was collected from private browsing sessions.
The upshot of all this is that Google's Chrome web browser will soon include a warning that "private" browsing does not prevent users from being tracked.
It's clear that that terms like privacy and private browsing are "ambiguous" with no fixed definitions and they vary from one developer to another. Firefox, a so called privacy-focused web browser, explicitly states that its private browsing mode "doesn’t make you anonymous" when a private window is opened. So, it comes back to us, the user to do the research and be aware of the fickle nature of some claims when based on our definition of "private".
In reality all Google's privacy mode does is ensure that none of your browsing history, cookies, site data or any information entered in forms is saved on your device thus protecting your privacy from any other user on the same device. That's it!
"The privacy lawsuit claimed tracking users in "Incognito" mode "allows Google to offer better, more targeted, advertisements to users".
It argued that this was "the core of Google's business", with the tech company generating billions in revenue from its advertising business each year, and that Google sold data that was collected from private browsing sessions.
The upshot of all this is that Google's Chrome web browser will soon include a warning that "private" browsing does not prevent users from being tracked.
It's clear that that terms like privacy and private browsing are "ambiguous" with no fixed definitions and they vary from one developer to another. Firefox, a so called privacy-focused web browser, explicitly states that its private browsing mode "doesn’t make you anonymous" when a private window is opened. So, it comes back to us, the user to do the research and be aware of the fickle nature of some claims when based on our definition of "private".