TECHNOLOGY

Going ‘Incognito’

Can you really web browse on the down low?

By Andy Greenberg | Forbes.com | Forbes.com

Sep 5, 2008 | Updated: 11:43 a.m. ET Sep 5, 2008

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Apple calls it "Private Browsing." Microsoft calls it "InPrivate." Google's new Chrome browser calls it "Incognito." And yes, practically everyone else calls it "Porn Mode."

Chrome's launch on Tuesday confirmed a new feature as a must-have in Web-browsing software: a cloak of invisibility that hides the user's path around the Web. Incognito browsing, like a similar setting in a new version of Internet Explorer released last week, is designed to erase any trace of the sites you've recently visited, wiping away cached pages and browsing history from your hard drive and turning off the browser's autocomplete function, which can reveal what you've recently typed into text boxes.

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That private mode can be used for hiding indiscretions in the Web's red-light district, or, as Google innocently suggests, for planning "surprises like gifts or birthdays." But such privacy features have an increasingly more important purpose than hiding your tracks from snooping family members. Google's and Microsoft's new browsing modes don't just wipe incriminating data from a user's hard drive; they offer features that shield users from the Web's ever-more-aggressive behavioral data-gathering by advertisers.

Increased tracking of user behavior online for targeting ads—the subject of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last July—is one factor driving demand for that privacy cloak, says the Center for Democracy and Technology's Ari Schwartz. And those demands may open a new front in the browser war. "Competition in this space is clearly growing," Schwartz says. "As it plays out, it's a very good thing for user privacy."

But browsers have yet to agree on just what "privacy" means. Apple's Safari's "Private Browsing"—pioneered in 2005—is decidedly designed for hiding your tracks from your spouse, not the Web companies collecting data on your online activities. "Private Browsing" doesn't block cookies—unique identifier files downloaded by your browser that Web sites and advertisers use to follow you from one site visit to the next. To block or delete cookies, users have to toggle those options or manually delete them in another menu.

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Posted By: n79q.com @ 01/02/2009 11:36:21 PM

thanks alot
http://www.n79q.com/vb/index.php
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Posted By: wasaywasay @ 09/07/2008 8:33:04 AM

"And yes, practically everyone else calls it "Porn Mode.""

Oh, come on. To cavalierly suggest that the need for privacy is an excuse for porn viewing is simply offensive. For one thing, where's your evidence that it is? For another, privacy is fundamental--and it should be served by browser developers seriously. Now that begs a question: What need is privacy in browser design? Well, one visit to an Internet cafe should answer that.

Now that IE8 has InPrivate and Chrome has Incognito, I hope Opera comes up with one too, and soon. And, oh, it should call it Phantom of the Opera.
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Posted By: burbank @ 09/06/2008 3:48:34 AM

The information that data minning companys already have on the average american is astounding. That anyone can gather such information under the guise of "marketing research" proves PT Barnum's maxim that a sucker is born every minute. We as americans say we want privacy and believe we have it, but such is not the case. Don't believe it? Just goggle your own name and see just what others can find out about you. And that's just the private sector. The government has a far more nebulous system for gathering information. The point that I'm trying to make is that privacy is just that-private. And the only way that someone else should have access to our personal information is by getting permission from the individual who is the subject of the query first.