The Private/Incognito Browser

Do you really know what it does and when to use it?

Based on what I still hear, hardly anyone understands what the private or incognito mode of a browser does exactly and when they should use it. There’s no instruction manual. What are you keeping private? From who?

Shared Devices

Here’s a big reason why you would go incognito (since most people use Chrome these days) on your browser. Say it’s 1995 and there’s only one computer with internet access in your village. You don’t really want the people who use that computer to know what websites you visit. Going incognito — and of course remembering to close your browser when you finish — will prevent your browsing history from being known to the people who use it after you. No? The same applies if you’re on a work computer that other people have access to. Or if you let a friend borrow your laptop for a bit.

Private Parts

But what information is kept private? Just my browsing history? Cookies also won’t be saved when you’re in private/incognito mode. That means if you do a little online banking and forget to sign out of that website but do remember to close all your private browser windows, no one can come in later and easily access your account. Information you fill in forms is another item that gets taken care of when you use private/incognito. Another person coming in after you can’t, for example, just hit the browser back button or try to auto-fill and see what you entered. It’s important to note here that all private browser windows need to be closed since most browsers share browsing history, cookies, and form data across private browser windows you use.

Tracking

Most people don’t want to be tracked online. Sadly, contrary to popular belief, using a private browser won’t help you in this regard. Websites that you visit…well, they know where you live! Yes, they can get your approximate geographic location, what kind of operating system you’re using, and which browser you’re using. If you want to hide your location, you need to use a trustworthy VPN. Here’s a not-so-fun-fact: The Google is better at locating you than your ISP, which is why law enforcement agencies often send it warrants to know when “people of interest” were at a given time. Even if you’re able to hide your location, web services like Google (but certainly not limited to it) will create digital fingerprints or profiles by examining which web pages you hit at which time using which browser, and so forth. There are even a large number of companies that do this type of tracking across websites of different companies. The point again is that private/incognito won’t help you here.