I don’t know if you have ever noticed a feature called “Incognito Mode” or “Privacy Mode” when using a browser to surf the Internet.
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I estimate that many missionaries will use this to browse some indescribable content late at night.
I'm talking about the correct way to remove bone-in chicken feet. I don't know what you are thinking. There are also many people who use this “incognito mode” hoping to get rid of tracking by various websites and avoid leaking their private information and usage habits.
However, it was this small feature that seemed to help users protect their privacy that caused Google a lawsuit.
In June 2020, fellow Californians filed a class action lawsuit, alleging that the “incognito mode” of Google's Chrome browser was not as private as people thought.
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Fellow Californians believe that Google’s introduction to “Incognito” is misleading, making users think that their online activities will not be tracked if this mode is enabled, but in fact Google is still monitoring
. After four years of fighting, the lawsuit finally reached an out-of-court settlement in early April this year – Google promised to destroy billions of data points improperly collected in incognito mode.
It's also equivalent to admitting it,It does collect user data in incognito mode.
However, Google did not agree to the request of the California folks to compensate each user US$5,000, and it will be up to the California folks to continue to argue.
In fact, this wave of Google is not unfair.
The main reason is that the word “incognito” is too misleading, which makes fellow Californians completely invisible after turning on the incognito mode.
But in fact, the incognito mode does not fully protect many sensitive data. For example, real-time network monitoring and IP address tracking, its prevention and control capabilities are basically zero.
For example, every time we visit a strange website, we will be asked about Cookies.
We have told you about this before. It is a tool for storing network data. It is used to remember user names and passwords, display customized content, maintain shopping cart status, etc.
Incognito mode has very limited protection for it. It only prohibits web pages from using one type of Cookies – persistent Cookies, which are usually used to store user preferences, login status information, shopping cart contents, etc. that need to be maintained for a long time.
It is generally written to the user's hard drive by the browser to ensure that when the user exits the webpage and re-enters it, it can be recognized and continue the surfing experience.
Incognito mode disables persistent cookies, which does prevent some advertisers from collecting user information across multiple websites. It also prevents users from having their information stolen by subsequent users of the device after using the browser on a public computer.
But as high as the Tao is, so is the devil.
Incognito mode does not prevent a single web page from tracking the user's behavior in real time while the user is in incognito mode.
Because the incognito mode does not prohibit web pages from using another type of cookies – temporary cookies, but adopts a “use and destroy” strategy.
These temporary cookies will be used to store temporary data such as game scores, temporary search keywords, and browsed product lists to ensure that the web page can be used normally.
Although these temporary cookies will be destroyed once the user closes the incognito window or exits incognito mode.
But this does not prevent websites from using them to collect user information before they are destroyed.
Every time I mention this, I seem to hear some unscrupulous websites mocking: “Just delete it, it's okay, I've already written it down anyway.”
In addition to temporary cookies, web servers can also use web browser fingerprints, HTML5 local storage, etc. to track users.
Although these methods may be limited in incognito mode, even so, they can still be used to record the user's browsing trajectory and behavioral preferences.
In addition, the incognito mode does not hide the user's IP address, and the server can still identify the user's approximate geographical location and network provider.
Combined with the behavioral data collected previously, it is not difficult to track who is also visiting. Even more powerful, it can also analyze what the visitor's preferences are and what type of advertisements they will not resist.
Many websites have indeed done this, including Google, which was the defendant this time – because Google is also the largest advertising company in the world in a sense, and they need to collect accurate user portraits to improve the accuracy of advertising push. This increases revenue from your own advertising business.
I used Google's incognito mode to log in to Google, but the data was still stolen by Google, which was somewhat abstract.
So it makes sense for fellow Californians to say that the incognito mode of Google Chrome is a lie. It is indeed not the kind of “true incognito” that they understand.
Although Chrome has already “hinted” this in small fonts on the homepage of entering incognito mode, I would say that the fonts could have been larger. . .
You can’t blame Google entirely for this, as other browsers also have this problem with their incognito modes. As long as the underlying implementation principle remains unchanged, the flaws of “incognito mode” will always exist. It can still only prevent your girlfriend or good friends from checking your surfing footprints, but it cannot prevent the continued use of unscrupulous websites that want to fill you with ads every day. Spying on you.
It's just that Google has both an incognito mode and an advertising business, which is a bit like slapping itself in the face.
That's the thing. In fact, we have mentioned the real situation of incognito mode to you on different occasions before. But after Google’s lawsuit came out, I asked around, and some friends still didn’t know.
So I would like to take advantage of the news of this lawsuit to remind everyone again.
To protect browsing privacy throughout the entire process, remember that in addition to turning on “Incognito Mode” and “Privacy Mode”, it is best to use a solution such as Onion Routing.
Of course, doing this also means sacrificing some surfing experience. For example, you will encounter some minor troubles when logging in to your account.
At this time, it depends on everyone’s own choice.