Tim HergertAug 23, 2024
Show threadtibiAug 23, 2024
@cjust incognito modes in browsers should never have been equated with privacy to begin with. all they do is scrub local history
Show threadBenAug 24, 2024

@tibi @cjust when I worked on a browser (which luckily recedes into history ever further) the private mode we built had truly ephemeral data. Pages loaded never hit the disk, no writes were performed to any persistent store, and any and all telemetry was disabled across the entire product while it was enabled.

Seeing malfeasance like this from my peers is rage-inducing and strips away user trust.

Show threadSimeon.__proto__
@[email protected] @tibi @cjust By peers do you mean the people on Chrome or at Google? AFAIK the client did what it said it would. The problem was that servers can and do still collect data about people that use private browsing and correlate it with other data
Aug 24, 2024 at 1:23amWeb
Show threadBenAug 24, 2024

@dotproto

@tibi @cjust the trick there remains making private modes look and feel the same as normal browsing to the site that's loaded. APIs leak that constantly, like writing to a persistent store failing or otherwise.

At that point, it's a matter of public policy and laws around data collection.