The Incognito Mode myth has been thrown out of whack
Google Discrepants How Many Private Browsers Have You Persistently Used? An Electronic Correspondence to the Cosmic Web
Google has agreed to delete “billions of data records” the company collected while users browsed the web using Incognito mode, according to documents filed in federal court in San Francisco on Monday. The settlement caps years of revelations about how much data the tech giant pilfers from its users even when they are in privatebrowsing mode.
The company is happy to resolve the lawsuit, which they always believed was meritless, said Castaeda. Though the plaintiffs valued the proposed settlement at $5 billion, which was the amount they originally sought in damages, Castañeda said that they are “receiving zero.” Damages for the class are not included in the settlement.
“This Settlement ensures real accountability and transparency from the world’s largest data collector and marks an important step toward improving and upholding our right to privacy on the Internet,” the plaintiffs wrote in the proposed settlement filing.
Castaeda said that they don’t associate data with users when using Incognito mode. We are happy to remove the technical data that was never used for personalization.
Further blocking of third party cookies within Incognito mode for five years will be one of the steps that Google must take.
Critics of Incognito, a staple of the Chrome browser since 2008, say that, at best, the protections it offers fall flat in the face of the sophisticated commercial surveillance bearing down on most users today; at worst, they say, the feature fills people with a false sense of security, helping companies like Google passively monitor millions of users who’ve been duped into thinking they’re browsing alone.
