this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
155 points (97.5% liked)

Technology

59152 readers
2146 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The search giant will block third party tracking by default for people searching the web in private mode.

top 19 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 68 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In other news, Google has been found to have retained all the data that it said it did not have, and then promised to delete.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Incognito has always been about not storing your browser history on your computer. It’s so that “hentai tentacle redneck porn” is not showing up as first result as soon you’re typing “h” when your family is around. It has never been about preventing tracking.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

Shhhhhhhhh, people see the man in a hat and assume they're perfectly safe from any and all hacker men

[–] [email protected] 63 points 7 months ago

Now this is a solid April Fools joke.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In this thread: People (pretending to be?) incredibly unaware of what incognito browsing is.

Newsflash: It just means your activities are not locally logged. That doesn't mean it's impossible for online parties to track you, just a teensie bit harder. Hell, it literally says so when you open the incognito tab.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

THe phrasing of the message implies that you're still subject to eg. your employer logging your network access, and third-party sites logging your IP - both of which would be physically unavoidable and not within the browser's ability to control.

It very carefully avoids saying 'we're still selling your identity and browsing habits to ad companies and dataminers even though we could totally prevent that lol'.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

They got sued anyways and lost, thus the change

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

"Haha April fools"

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Delete is just the name of the new massive database they just spun up

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I thought I read that they weren't going to outright delete the dataset, instead they were going to anonymize the data

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Just because they have been caught logging that info. Imagine what else is logged and is still unknown.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Caught?

It was never a secret. The incognito page has had "this doesn't keep anyone from tracking you" for years.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I'm aware.

It was so obscenely frivolous every lawyer involved should be in prison for fraud. Google never at any point implied that incognito did anything to impact what websites you connected to knew or recorded.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It literally list the entities that can see your activity. Websites you visit, your employer/school, your isp. It conviniently leaves out the browser from this list. Its very misleading.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Because your browser isn't doing tracking. That's what you're turning off.

The absurd lawsuit was because Google still did the same things server side when you were in incognito mode.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Who needs the data anyways when they've already trained their AI weights with it or sold it? No one needs the original anymore.