Our lives seem so intertwined with the online world now that, similar to in real life, we want to protect our privacy online as well—a sentiment that has only been growing in recent years. Whilst tech-savvy individuals often boast about ways to access the internet anonymously, the majority of the population relies upon the good ol’, easy, incognito mode offered by web browsers. Like in Harry Potter, we believe it to be our little Invisibility Cloak. However, have you ever stopped to wonder if it actually does what we believe, i.e., truly protect us? Let’s find out.
First of all, let’s address an elephant in the room. Do web browsers actually make the claim that their incognito mode protects your identity and keeps everything on the down-low? Well, the thing is, no available browser—be it Chrome, Firefox, or Safari—explicitly makes the claim that their incognito mode will protect your identity online. In fact, they often include disclaimers saying the exact opposite. The name “Incognito” or “Private” certainly can be interpreted to be misleading, as it has clearly been for, and we suppose it’s a fair estimate, millions of users across the globe.
So, here’s the real deal. The incognito mode is supposed to only prevent your browsing history, cookies, and site data from being saved on your device after your session ends. To give you a real-life example of how this aids online data protection would be this—and spoiler alert; do not get your hopes high:
Imagine your partner’s birthday is coming up and you wish to buy a gift for them. However, browsing for gifts will result in those pages showing up in your history as well as in your Google account activity if you don’t sign in (you are signed out by default). Only when you manually log in again will your activity be tracked.
So, we stated that incognito mode stops your browser from recording your history. However, what we assume it does—but really doesn’t in reality—is:
To add on to it, it doesn’t protect you against malware, phishing attacks, or other forms of cyber threats either.
The false sense of privacy that is embedded within us due to, frankly, years of believing incognito modes protect us gets shattered when a company like Google is forced to purge billions of files containing data collected from people browsing the internet using the incognito mode to settle a privacy lawsuit case. Sure, the Incognito mode has certain benefits, but they are far and wide from complete anonymity.
To actually improve your online privacy, here are some steps that you can take:
Find yourself a legit tech support services provider and they can play a major role in protecting your online privacy. Be it helping you spot phishing scams or locking down on any compromised smart home devices, these services guide you through the risks that might not be obvious to the untrained eye. They can help you with:
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by digital security, tech support services offer both hands-on help and peace of mind. The best part? You don’t have to figure everything out alone.
We don’t want this to seem like incognito mode is absolutely pointless—there are certain benefits to it. It results in your browser not recording your search history, it helps with checking flight prices without price hikes from cookies, you can log into a second account without signing out of the first one, search freely without autocomplete suggestions, etc. However, that is mostly it. It is a privacy tool but not a privacy solution. Understand its limits, and if online data protection is a major concern for you, follow the practices we stated and hire professional tech support services.
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