[HN Gopher] The 'Incognito Mode' lawsuit: a legal blow to Google...
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The 'Incognito Mode' lawsuit: a legal blow to Google's privacy-
washing tactics
Author : dotcoma
Score : 31 points
Date : 2023-10-30 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (proton.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (proton.me)
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Unsure how successful the plaintiffs will be here. The Incognito
| Mode splash page (screenshotted in the article) explicitly notes:
|
| > Your activity might still be visible to:
|
| > * Websites you visit
|
| > * Your employer or school
|
| > * Your internet service provider
|
| Which to me, at least, makes clear that Incognito Mode is not a
| catch-all privacy-preserving mode.
|
| Additionally, the "Block third-party cookies" toggle implies that
| websites can/will use third-party cookies when the toggle _isn
| 't_ selected.
|
| (I have mixed feelings on some of these anti-Google suits...
| considering how many rock-solid cases there are to bring against
| Google, chasing the ones that are founded on shaky premises feels
| like a waste of time at best and actively detrimental to the
| other cases at worst.)
| unaindz wrote:
| I'm pretty sure those disclaimers were not there when the
| lawsuit started a few years back. People generally thought
| privacy mode had a lot more capabilities than it really had, at
| least most layman people I talked with about it. Now it seems
| that has changed, probably because of the disclaimers.
| tssva wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you are wrong.
| Scion9066 wrote:
| They've been there in some form for a very long time (see the
| ancient screenshot here): https://www.chromium.org/user-
| experience/incognito/
| eurebus wrote:
| > Your activity might still be visible to:
|
| > * Websites you visit
|
| "might" is not "is". Deception.
| fungiblecog wrote:
| Who thought that? Surely everyone knows incognito mode is about
| privacy on your local computer ie watch porn without leaving
| evidence. weird.
| RA2lover wrote:
| From the article:
|
| >The plaintiffs further claim that Google still collects data
| during private Chrome sessions that the company can de-
| anonymize and use to target you with ads. They say the company
| stores people's browsing data in the same logs, whether they're
| in regular or private mode. When combined, "Google can use them
| to 'uniquely identify a user with a high probability of
| success.'"
| Scion9066 wrote:
| They don't have a way to detect whether you are using
| Incognito or not, so they can't treat those people's browsing
| data differently.
|
| When there is a way, they patch it:
|
| https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-
| initiat...
|
| https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=990592
| mission_failed wrote:
| Incognito literally means to have your real identity hidden. It
| seems deceptive for a company to name/market a product as
| 'incognito' when it is literally funnneling data to them that
| identifies you and links to you real identity.
|
| Especially when the text warnings do not explicitly state that
| browsing data is being sent to Google and added to their tracking
| and marketing database about yourself.
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(page generated 2023-10-30 23:02 UTC)