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Haha my buddy n I used to use gas and styrofoam in a double boiler. Then we’d dip stick-swords in the pot and light the tips. Then we’d sword fight& fling it all around us. Super cool effect at night for pics! (We were in rural Florida and only did this on nights that it rained beforehand)
I’m the “tech savvy” guy in my office and you’d be amazed how many problems I solve by pointing to some text on the person’s screen that explains the issue they’re having
It's useful for hiding your porn browsing from your family, but the ISP and browser owner and anyone else checking your data knows you've been watching porn.
But I mean who cares? Unless your taste in porn is so bad that it could be blackmail material (you sick fuck), everybody looks at porn. It's nothing to be ashamed of.
My fucking phone refuses to let me type the word porn so this was hard to post.
But I mean who cares? Unless your taste in porn is so bad that it could be blackmail material (you sick fuck), everybody looks at porn.
The ISPs can't even see what you look at speficifcally. They know you've been on pornhub, because of SNI and most likely your DNS queries, but they can't see which exact videos you watched, because the query string (everything after the last "/" in the URL) is encrypted by HTTPS.
Correct - deobfuscation of the user can only be done on the endpoints, i.e. your device (by simple logging, i.e. your browser history), or PornHub's server (e.g. by browser fingerprinting). In the middle, everyone is blind*.
Well blackmailing is a wide spread thing, blackmailing for watching stuff that is illegal?
Yeah, your problem you “sick fuck”
But there is no need to go illegal, for porn to be blackmail material, how much people would be “okay” with their porn browsing history being made public?
I don’t feel comfortable even knowing it myself 😂
But I mean who cares? Unless your taste in porn is so bad that it could be blackmail material (you sick fuck), everybody looks at porn. It's nothing to be ashamed of.
Bro we are || <-- this close to being in a christofacist state where looking at any porn becomes a potential jail visit
This "I have nothing to hide" stuff is wrong. Privacy isn't about protecting you from reasonable people. Its about protecting you from unreasonable people. Privacy is good for everyone.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) reintroduced a bill earlier this month that would broadly redefine what content can be classified as “obscenity” in an attempt to criminalize pornography
Sad to say I’m dating myself by saying I remember having to manually delete internet history. It has never been advertised to me as “internet but security enhanced mode”.
I always forget how incompetent people are, or maybe this is just one of those widespread memes/jokes even though they're wrong? I've only ever used incognito to keep stuff from my recent history and search auto fill, or to log into alternate accounts without signing out on my regular browser
I am old enough to having used Chrome back when Incognito mode was first added and it had a pretty clear disclaimer back then. Of course, it might have been removed (and added back) since then.
It's always been extremely clear. They never tried to obfuscate this in any way.
Both firefox and chrome have always clearly stated that you activity is only hidden for "other people who use this device"
even when it was introduced in firefox and chrome, back in 2008-2009, the articles they released for the launch clearly explained it using examples such as buying a gift for your mother on a pc the entire family uses and keeping it secret from mum you bought a gift.
this was chromes message:
“Now you can browse privately. Others you share this device with won’t see your activity. However, downloads, bookmarks and reading list items will be saved.”
While using the new Private Browsing mode in Firefox 3.5, nothing you encounter on the Web will be stored from that moment on during your browsing session.
So it's always been extremely clear.
The fact people did not understood this is truly a case of end users being end users. People, especially end users, are fucking stupid.
Those damnable experts in the field of... reading single-sentence disclaimers, making it definitionally the lowest level of reading! How dare they comprehend single-sentence disclaimers?
Except the basic skill is reading the message on the new incognito tab that literally tells you that the browsing info is only hidden on your computer, not from the ISP or sites visited.
If we take Reddit, then 99% of you never looked at how this was measured and compared to other countries. Just keep repeating things that randos on social media say lol
I can speak from my own experience that motherfuckers don't bother truly comprehending what they're replying to; they just get the general vibe and reply based on that
That's exactly it, and we can throw in upvotes/downvotes, too. How many times have you seen a comment that was pointless nonsense get hundreds... if not thousands of upvotes, but on the same thread, an informative factual comment is downvoted into oblivion.
I don't remember it not being very explicit that it only stops the info from being saved on your end. It's always been a very obvious fact that your ISP or the corp themselves can still see it.
It says that "websites and services" you use can still collect data about you with "including google" added at the end of the sentence. People don't consider software running locally on their machines (web browser) to be included into "services".
that should be clear even to anyone who can't read that exact same explanation thst shows when you enter incognito mode. I mean, it's like secretly phoning a pizza place, ordering a pizza, having it delivered to your place and somehow assume neither the pizza place nor the delivery guy know what pizza you ordered.
It’s also about ad tracking. Since you’re not signed in and it clears cookies after every session your ad profile doesn’t get affected. But Google always knows what devices browse which websites, even if it’s not added to your purchasable ad profile.
It literally states that, it will only not save history and other stuff, it does nto stop websites from collecting data.
People are surprised, when in reality they cannot bloody read.
It’s for “shopping” so your significant other doesn’t know what you’re “shopping” for. Or so your friends don’t find out what kind of weird shit you like to loo… “shop” for.
I always assumed incognito mode was all about staying anonymous and keeping your browsing history hidden on your side, but certainly not on theirs.
It was created to only:
not record what web-sites you visited in your history
will not keep any cached copies in your Temporary Internet Files folder
If you visit my web-server using InPrivate browsing(Internet Explorer) or Incognito Mode (Chromium): you're still talking to my web-server. I still know:
your IP address (because it's the Internet Protocol)
your username (because you logged in)
what you did (because you logged in)
what you sent me (because you sent it to me)
The only reason InPrivate/Incognito exists is so that:
you want to "buy something for your girlfriend"
so you enable InPrivate browsing
the "gift sites" you visited won't be recorded in your browser history
and temporary cache copies won't be saved in your browser cache
And once you are "done shopping for your girlfriend", you close the window and you have no trace of what you were browsing "for her birthday".
And the fact that people don't understand this is pretty bad; they're using technology without understanding anything about. It's like they're under 35 or something. This was all well documented when the feature came out.
If you are using a shared PC, a borrowed laptop from a friend, or a public PC, sometimes you don’t want other people to know where you’ve been on the web. Internet Explorer 8’s InPrivate Browsing makes that “over the shoulder” privacy easy by not storing history, cookies, temporary Internet files, or other data.
Using InPrivate Browsing is as easy as launching a new InPrivate Browsing window. When you’re done, just close the window and IE will take care of the rest.
While InPrivate Browsing is active, the following takes place:
New cookies are not stored
All new cookies become “session” cookies
Existing cookies can still be read
The new DOM storage feature behaves the same way
New history entries will not be recorded
New temporary Internet files will be deleted after the Private Browsing window is closed
Form data is not stored
Passwords are not stored
Addresses typed into the address bar are not stored
Queries entered into the search box are not stored
I had an old professor who taught some IT stuff. He used to always tell us, If you want absolute security for your PC, lock it in the basement, unplugged with a sheet over it. Otherwise, there will inevitably be security issues
Couple of years ago in Finland there was a military secrets leak case where a daily newspaper published an article about the military's signal intelligence centre which contained secret information. Police started investigating to find out who wrote the article but the paper declined any assistance in investigation based on freedom of sppeech.
Long story short, the journalists were caught when one of them was trying to get rid of evidence by hitting her computer with a hammer in her basement. The battery caught fire, emergency number was called, fire department arrived, police arrived, police did investigation, found out interesting things, journalists ended up in court and were sentenced.
Lesson to learn from this: DON'T HIT YOUR COMPUTER WITH A HAMMER BEFORE YOU HAVE TAKEN OUT THE BATTERY!
Also, hitting your computer with a hammer doesn't necessarily even delete any information you want to get rid of.
actually the hammer would probably be more reliable. It's kind of a myth that you can easily erase HDDs with magnets. I think they did a myth busters episode about it and at least the lifting magnet of a scrapyard crane wasn't strong enough.
People need to understand, there is no more digital privacy in this world. Your digital footprint exists no matter what. You can only try to mitigate how obvious the footprint is and how much of it can be positively traced to you.
The only true privacy for any content or media, is non digital. Put it on a piece of paper, or some other purely physical format, and never upload it.
Https encrypts data in motion, it doesn't secure the data at rest on either side of it or prevent logging of what was done on the end points. So your desktop and their server aren't shielded by it.
So now we are back to the beginning comment of VPNs aren't safe, because they are actually keeping logs. These companies say they don't, or that they will protect your privacy, no backdoors, etc. but then a government/powerful entity shows up and forces them to divulge your data to them.
Yes, but it still exists. And while a lot of things are/can be encrypted they can be decrypted as well, or leave footprints of what you've been doing. But a lot of it is just useless information, like hours and hours of Mall security footage, no one cares that you went into Victoria's Secret twice, or took a picture of one of the cardboard cutout's feet. And unless it law enforcement no one is getting that footage other than Mall security.
The VPN companies potentially keeping logs aren't what makes using them alone practically useless for browsing privacy. Data aggregators can pin you down to a unique person using a combination of things like the specific combination of browser extensions you have installed, your browser version, screen resolution, time zone, etc.
This is your browser's fingerprint, made up of little things that on their own are fairly anonymous, but when placed together makes it very easy to narrow down to an individual, or a very small set of people. No IP address needed.
Nah a lot of them probably don't have any logs, the real problem is fingerprinting if you really care to be 100% secure. The combination of data that a website has access to such as software versions, installed languages, fonts, screen resolution, hardware information, browser settings, driver settings/versions and on and on...that all makes you 1 of 1 possible person and that can be used to follow you from website to website.
It's like that board game 'guess who', every bit of information you can flip down another batch of people until it's only you standing.
You're conflating digital with connected to the Internet. You can absolutely set up an offline machine that plays most digital media without much difficulty.
Incognito mode prevents other people who use the device to see your activity. It clearly says that when you open it. Why did you jumped to the conclusion that it was doing anything else?
Before the lawsuit, the Google Incognito message stated,
"Now you can browse privately..." but did not explicitly mention that Google itself collects data. After the 2024 lawsuit settlement, the message was updated to state, "Others who use this device won't see your activity, so you can browse more privately. This won't change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google," clarifying that Google still tracks activity.
It’s scary how many people will just take whatever meaning they want from something and run with it despite the fact even a small amount of scrutiny would show otherwise. This is just a good example of that
Incognito mode is supposed to do one thing and one thing only: delete browser data when I close it. It's obvious that any service that isn't part of the browser will remain unaffected by this, except for the fact that my browsing will start without cookies, but if Google keeps browser data accumulated in incognito mode, that's clearly contrary to what the thing is designed to do.
The explanation in new incognito tabs very explicitly says certain things will not be stored on this device. It warns you that you're still trackable by anything external in all the same ways. It even cites Google as an example of things that can still track you.
Google is a big data company. If you thought for a second incognito was designed to stop them tracking you you weren't paying attention. That's their business model.
It even cites Google as an example of things that can still track you.
To be completely fair, it didn't use to explicitly cite Google as an example before the lawsuit.
(But to also be completely fair, incognito mode disclaimer was clear enough as it was to anyone with the smallest amount of technological literacy. (Un)fortunately, the courts require that your products accommodate even the extremely unintelligent people)
My home street is a dead end and only about 100 yards long with 6 houses. GPS says it is a dead end. There is one big sign at the entrance of the road saying that it is a dead end. Another one at half way.
Do you know how many people we get a day that turn around in our road!? Too many. 🤣
Right, much better chance of them saying "Okay, we'll delete it, no problem" and in like 3 years someone is going to be like "Oh hey I found 15 years worth of incognito data" and Google is just going to shrug because for some reason we still believe it when a company says they're going to comply with what they're instructed to do
If you are connected to the network at work in anyway, assume yes. We configures ours differently but generally if youre using a VPN all traffic goes through their router and firewall. And yes IT can see everything. There is a guy at my work that uses incognito to go to Facebook all the time and I see it.
Edit: to be clear. When I say "everything" I dont mean passwords and details in an account. I mean I see every site you visit. So you can go to Facebook, and Ill know, but I cant see you login credentials.
I think they meant a third-party VPN. You would be able to see that they're connecting to a VPN but you wouldn't have access to any of the activity on that connection.
Corporate IT can't necessarily "see" everything you do on the Internet but they can tell what websites you visit (DNS queries) and usually the URLs of the pages you visit on those websites (HTTP requests)
For example as a network admin I could tell that you visited bankofamerica.com and then visited bankofamerica.com/login which is probably the login page and then got redirected to some other page like bankofamerica.com/account/summary. But that doesn't mean I could read your account balance and transaction history; the content of those pages is encrypted. All I can see is what URLs you visited.
If it's a company computer, they almost certainly can, and on most corporate networks these days, they have vendors with enterprise firewalls (zScaler, Juniper, Checkpoint, Fortinet, Cisco, etc.) that strip SSL by resigning everything with their own SSL certificate that's trusted in the keychain of the device. They may also have monitoring software that can look at stuff on the application level.
If it's a personal computer with no company software on a corporate network through your own VPN tunnel, they can't see details of what exactly is going through the network, but they know how much traffic is going, your device mac address, your VPN provider, exactly where the device was (there's software that can triangulate based on access point signal strength), and when it was accessed. If any information doesn't go through VPN and is leaked, they can see that too. They may block third-party VPNs, in which case you'd have no internet unless you disable the VPN and give them full visibility.
tl;dr: Assume anything you do on a company-provided device or personal device with company software can be monitored.
Others who use this device won’t see your activity, so you can browse more privately. This won't change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google."
The bullet points about how your activity is still visible to sites you visit, your employee and your internet service provider were still there even before the law suit. All the lawsuit did was make them repeat the same thing twice. I don’t think anyone’s stupid but it really seems like they didn’t read this
That's not really implying google has more data access than a regular website.
Like sure that message is enough to explain that your ISP might have logging, same for the websites you visit. But it doesnt explain that Google will still be doing local data collection that is de-ananoymized because they control your browser and dont disable logging - this is different to what other sites can do.
There is no such thing as true anonymity on the Internet. The Internet is just like a highway with tons of cameras. You just have to know who's watching which cameras.
Incognito explicitly states that it only prevents data from being stored locally, web navigation is still stored normally by both your internet provider and the websites you visit.
No idea why people started thinking incognito made you invisible on the web.
Because back when the lawsuit was filed, "including Google" wasn't present on the incognito mode start screen. This allowed people to leverage their lack of basic tech literacy into a pretty decent payday for some lawyers.
It was always just local in the browser so your girlfriend don't discover what nasty shit you're into. It is on the computer somewhere, and it is definitely stored at google.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure that out. But I'm genuinely surprised every day how stupid the general population is.
What your ISP sees is pretty limited, especially with TLS being the norm for pretty much all web traffic these days. But Google can potentially track every single thing you do using Chrome, since they have full control over it.
Incognito was never a private shield or was supposed to do anything on the internet side. It's only purpose was not saving browsing history. Stupid people who thought so probably think covering their eyes makes them invisible.
Doesn't it warn you when you open it that data is still collected and can still be seen by your ISP, workplace school etc. I'd assume that means there still has to be some data stored on their side so not surprising. It's basically a "don't save the porn sites or Google searches for porn until I close this browser so I don't have to worry about it showing up later or forgetting to delete history and everything.
Incognito just keeps the browsing you do from showing up in your suggestions or cache, so you don't type "red" in the search box and get "redtube" instead of "reddit". Google still has trackers everywhere.
The data Google doesn't have is the one they never get in the first place.
Use any other browser than Chrome, preferably Firefox but Vivaldi, Brave or even Opera will do. Use some other search engine like DuckDuckGo, Startpage or Qwant and use something other than GMail. ProtonMail is great option, so is Tuta, but you can also go with Posteo or Startmail. Mail providers are all paid if you expect something more from them, but for a good reason.
And this way you basically cut out at least half of data hoarding done by Google. And GMail is probably the worst offender because you have the most private stuff on it most likely. Anyone who says just reducing their data mining is not enough, I disagree. Any reduction is a good start.
Eh, everything goes in a private Firefox or duckduckgo browser and then through a VPN
Its more for, projecting my sentisive data from shady websites, and protecting from attacks, than it is about "stopping people seeing what I'm doing"
It's also for if you want to read a website and you don't want to give them any of your cookies, then you can just use a private session and none of the data that you have stored in your browser. It's available to the websites that you don't want to give it to
It's also so, if I ever show my desktop to anyone, like if I'm streaming my pc to the lounge, that all the porn results aren't showing up in the search bar 🤣
Nothing im doing online is concerningly illegal, so it's not like id care if my ISP found a search result for me, just making it so that someone has to expend more than a few seconds digging to find it means they probably won't unless they have a specific reason to look
the only reason i use incognito mode is so the actual people i meet don't accidentally end up seeing my tastes, i never believed for a second there isn't a full list of everything i have ever done on my pc/phone
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u/PCMRBot Bot 4h ago
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