Google's 'Incognito' Mode Inspires Staff Jokes - and a Big Lawsuit (bloomberg.com) 60
An email mocking Chrome browsing mode's faux privacy has surfaced in the courtroom. From a report: On International Data Privacy Day last year, an email popped into Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai's inbox from Google's marketing chief Lorraine Twohill full of ideas on gaining user trust. "Make Incognito Mode truly private," she wrote in a bullet point. "We are limited in how strongly we can market Incognito because it's not truly private, thus requiring really fuzzy, hedging language that is almost more damaging." Now, billions of dollars in damages could be at stake in a consumer lawsuit targeting the private-browsing feature if a judge agrees Tuesday to let the case proceed as a class action on behalf of millions of users.
Twohill's assessment of Incognito's shortcomings was remarkably candid considering Google had already been sued at the time she messaged her boss, who himself had shepherded the feature through development back when the company launched its Chrome browser in 2008. Google denies wrongdoing. "Privacy controls have long been built into our services and we encourage our teams to constantly discuss or consider ideas to improve them," spokesman Jose Castaneda said in an email. Court filings show that well before the search engine giant was taken to court, rank and file Googlers frankly voiced their own frustrations that Incognito didn't live up to its name.
Twohill's assessment of Incognito's shortcomings was remarkably candid considering Google had already been sued at the time she messaged her boss, who himself had shepherded the feature through development back when the company launched its Chrome browser in 2008. Google denies wrongdoing. "Privacy controls have long been built into our services and we encourage our teams to constantly discuss or consider ideas to improve them," spokesman Jose Castaneda said in an email. Court filings show that well before the search engine giant was taken to court, rank and file Googlers frankly voiced their own frustrations that Incognito didn't live up to its name.
But... (Score:4, Funny)
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Maybe, but I imagine your sig says everything anyone needs to know about your porn preferences... :-)
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That doesn't sound like it has anything to do with an octopus.
The very first sentence in a new Incognito window: (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device wonâ(TM)t see your activity.
Why should the courts care what some illiterate kooks falsely claim Incognito mode should do but very clearly does not?
Chrome wonâ(TM)t save the following information:
Your browsing history
Cookies and site data
Information entered in forms
Your activity might still be visible to:
Websites you visit
Your employer or school
Your internet service provider
If a giant warning explicitly pointing out what it does and doesn't hide isn't good enough anymore, just imagine a world where YOU can be held liable for any random expectation the lowest common denominator out there makes up, even when you clearly and plainly stated your intent.
Is that really a world you want to live in, just to "stick it to Google"?
Re:The very first sentence in a new Incognito wind (Score:4, Funny)
This is like, I sell you a hammer, which comes with a big warning saying:
CAUTION: CAN CAUSE SERIOUS BODILY HARM IF SWUNG AT OR FALLS ON SELF OR OTHERS.
And you sue anyway because of your purple thumbnail.
Testimony: "Well it looked like a nail, so I hit it with the hammer."
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Words have meaning. The word privacy means something. The words in the cover-your-ass text that Google puts under 'privacy' do not mean what the word privacy means.
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What should Google call it instead?
Free Browsing?
As opposed to "privacy beer".
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How about Personal Browsing. That describes and covers exactly what this is. No expectation of privacy, but it's personal.
Re: The very first sentence in a new Incognito win (Score:2)
It does provide privacy in exactly the means that it describes: It doesn't store anything locally. As soon as you close your browser, everything it has about you is gone. Common sense should tell you that if you give a website anything that it can use to track you, like say a login name, then it can track you. There's nothing your browser can possibly do about that.
Re:The very first sentence in a new Incognito wind (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the lawsuit, Google tracks user data even in “private mode” with the help of Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager, the “Google Sign-In button” for websites, website plug-ins, and various other applications.
About 70% of all publishers use Google services. So when a user visits a website, Google receives their personal information like IP address, location, and even what the person is viewing or has viewed. Google gets the user’s real-time data whether or not the user uses any of the Google services.
Seems people have a serious misunderstanding of what incognito mode is and isn't.
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It's not even called "incognito" any more, but "Guest" mode. This makes it much more clear what kind of "privacy" is being offered.
I personally find it useful for when I need to use somebody else's computer for some reason, I can log in to a site without worrying about things like saved passwords or shortcuts or auto-fill data.
Re: The very first sentence in a new Incognito win (Score:2)
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It would be very bad if they won. It would affect other browser's private modes and make it risky to offer any privacy enhancement at all, in case some bastard advertiser figured out a way around it.
In fact one of the advertisers would probably try to sue the developer of uBlock and maybe the EFF over Privacy Badger, because they are not 100% effective.
Re: The very first sentence in a new Incognito win (Score:2)
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Is that really a world you want to live in, just to "stick it to Google"?
The Google.
Stick it to the Google.
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How many times do I have to say it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you actually value your privacy, you won't use Chrome.
That's step one - and, if you ignore it, any other steps you might take are meaningless.
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If you actually value your privacy:
- Don't use a web browser
- Don't connect to the internet
- Don't use a smartphone
- Don't use a dumbphone
- Don't walk down a public street
Does anybody have the link to the full article? (Score:2)
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Right-click, open in Incognito mode. Ironically.
Is this a joke? (Score:5, Informative)
You’ve gone Incognito
Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity. However, downloads, bookmarks and reading list items will be saved. Learn more
Chrome won’t save the following information:
Your browsing history
Cookies and site data
Information entered in forms
Your activity might still be visible to:
Websites that you visit
Your employer or school
Your Internet service provider
I can't see how there is any opening for confusion in that text, it never says "Google will unable to see or collect any of your data". Furthermore, everyone knows that Google has the same respect for person liberty and privacy as North Korea + NAMBLA, so if you give them any path to your data, even by accident, they won't just grab it, they'll full on grotesquely abuse it.
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A lazy-ass entitled TLDR type deserves little sympathy, and certainly no compensation, if they are surprised, shocked, appalled sometime later.
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The first part of your post I have no quarrel with.
The second part, though:
I can't see how there is any opening for confusion in that text, it never says "Google will unable to see or collect any of your data". Furthermore, everyone knows that Google has the same respect for person liberty and privacy as North Korea + NAMBLA, so if you give them any path to your data, even by accident, they won't just grab it, they'll full on grotesquely abuse it.
seems troubling. It seems like you're saying that the reason it's okay for google not to take steps to be further in line with users' expectations is that everyone should know Google is out to get them --- which sounds an awful lot like blaming rape victims who were wearing skimpy clothing and going to the wrong part of town. The fact that it's generally understood that Google is a bad actor is itself a problem, and shouldn't excus
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I don't think anyone would argue that when you hear Google you think violation. My point was that you can't hear Google, or use a Google product, and think they'll be reasonable, that would be like hiring NAMBLA to watch your son, an
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Any website can easily do that.
Basic problem here is that people don't understand the basics of the architecture and function of the web.
When incognito mode / private mode browser feature was invented, people know what a f**king web browser was, and wouldn't expect its features to extend down to controlling what websites somewhere over the internet do.
Now, it's fair to say, more people are less clueful, about the information infrastruct
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The only true private browser is (Score:2, Informative)
Safari on Mac/iOS. I can log into any number gmail accounts, fb, LinkedIn, hotmail, yahoo mail and so on. Each tab has its own session. Last I checked, that didn't work with Edge, FF or Chrome.
Chrome has supported multiple profiles for years (Score:3)
Right now I'm browsing in my own profile. I have two other completely separate profiles on this device.
Chrome OS even has hotkeys to swap between profiles.
Re:The only true private browser is (Score:5, Informative)
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I use containers on Firefox all the time (mostly to keep Facebook and Gmail separate from everything else), but sadly they can't defeat Facebook's fingerprinting. My understanding is they can identify you across containers and even across different browsers on the same machine.
Using uBlock Origin to ban Facebook scripts when not on their page is a good step, but again they have "Off-Facebook Activity" where other sites report back to them from their servers. This can be turned off in your Facebook settings
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Safari will happily reopen all your private browsing windows if you quit it and restart it without manually closing them first. Try it by doing "cmd+Q" or "close session". This make absolutely no sense, from a (personal) privacy perspective.
So what were those jokes? (Score:2)
That's so far not really funny. What were those jokes?
Privacy mode by an ad agency (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook, Twitter, and many others are very similar in this respect. I don't think suing corporations is the way to go about it. We need to make the bulk collection of personal data illegal. No exceptions. No ifs or buts. If anyone wants to collect it, they need a specifically targeted warrant in each & every case.
The advertising industry won't go away & they probably won't lose much money as a result. They'll find other, less intrusive ways to sell their services.
Whaddaya think?
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While I agree with you, I don't think they are technically an ad agency. An ad agency creates ads for other companies. They are really a spy agency whose business is helping ad agencies target their ads.
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More nerds excusing bullshit. (Score:2, Interesting)
If something says autopilot and is marketed as magic, people will treat is as magic self driving.
Just like if something says private, people will treat it as if it was actually end-to-end private. They will not read the fine print. It's not guaranteed they will understand the fine print, even if they read it.
And before people complain, you fucking nerds here don't read the article, don't read the
Re:More nerds excusing bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
And are to be legally shielded for their one must say lazy if not willful ignorance?
Sounds a lot like these people belong in daycare, not out in the nasty and brutish world wild web.
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So, people, on average, are to be treated as stupid and intellectually lazy then (not expected to read any of the f**ing simple instructions, never mind the TFM), is your premise?
Yes. You might like to live in a fantasy world, but we don't.
brutish world wild web.
Even tech-savvy people can't keep up with all the web shenanigans. You, presumably, work in this industry, or very adjacent to it, so you know enough and are familiar with it.
But you obviously have never been around normal people who aren't exposed to it day to day and don't know the jargon well enough to even make sense of the limitations of "incognito mode". And they shouldn't have to be expected to understand it to be actually safe, just lik
You don't have to be a nerd (Score:2)
Your activity might still be visible to:
- Websites you visit
- Your employer or school
- Your internet service provider
You just have to have basic comprehension skills in English. And I'm sure the browser has alternate language versions.
I don't think it's the responsibility of the technology provider community to make the whole of the world's information infrastructure safe for those with sub grade-8 reading comprehension and vocabulary.
There can be padded walled gardens fo
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So google, on average, is to be treated as if it's above the law? They cooperate with fascist governments like China, hand over account credentials that can and do lead to people being jailed, tortured and killed. They buy enough influence in our government that they can operate with impunity, pay a pittance in taxes, use monopoly power, and collude with other silicon valley tech companies to keep worker salaries down. On top of that they collect and store personal information, irregardless of whatever p
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It's pretty obvious that tech companies taking flak in the news have their paid shills AKA marketing and social media interns spam forums like this... or else we have a surprising number of people mouthing the same talking point "HERP DERR they shoulda read the fine print!"
As a user I quickly realised that (Score:2)
As a user I quickly realised that incognito mode was nothing more than a sham when my kerberos credentials carried over from my regular session to my incognito session. I quickly realised that Google incognito is a bit like the wolf guarding the sheep.
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My memory is hazy but I had a similar realisation when I did something like shifting to a different Firefox container to log into a second Microsoft account and found it was already logged in. I don't think this is a sham, it indicates that some authentication tokens are stored on the OS and accessed by the browser.
I didn't know Google tracked you in incognito mode (Score:2)
No staff jokes here? (Score:2)
I sure had hopes for some Funny on this story.