Web browsers work like those that trace their roots back more than a decade, and the feature – first discovered in the top browser in 2005 – spread quickly as one copied the other, made tweaks and made small improvements.
Protect Your Privacy
Internet privacy: Advanced browsers, settings, and tips
How to protect your privacy in Windows 10
How to stay as private as possible on a Mac
The ultimate privacy guide for Android
How to stay as secretive as possible on Apple’s iPad and iPhone
But labels that promise privacy can be tricky. Simply put, going “incognito” is effective in monitoring online privacy as witchcraft protects against the flu.
That is because Private browsing is intended to clear track of your destination, search results, and content on forms you have completed. It is intended to hide, and not always there, your tracks from others who have access to a personal computer. That’s all.
Basically, these features promise not to record sites visited in browsing history, store cookies that indicate you have visited and entered sites, or remember details such as passwords used over time. But your web tracks are still being tracked by Internet providers – and the authorities who issue summonses to those organizations – employers who control the company’s network and advertisers who follow all your steps.
To alleviate the misunderstanding, many browsers have added more advanced privacy tools, commonly known as “anti-trackers,” to block the various types of bite-sized characters used by advertisers and websites to track where people are trying to compile digital content. doses or provide targeted ads.
While it may seem logical for a browser-based game to be a system that incorporates incognito modes and anti-tracking modes, it is unlikely to happen. Using private or anti-tracking browsers is costly: site passwords are not saved for future visits or sites break under tracker scratches. And those costs are not equal. It is much easier to open a certain level of non-tracking automatically than to do the same in private sessions, as evidenced by the number of browsers who do the past without complaining while none do the latter.
Private browsing, on demand, will remain the norm, as long as sites rely on cookies for common uses such as login and cart content.
But mode is always a useful tool whenever the browser – and the computer in it – share. To prove it, we have compiled instructions and information using incognito features – and anti-tracking tools – provided by the top four browsers: Google Chrome, Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge, Firefox for Mozilla and Apple’s Safari.
How to get incognito in Google Chrome
Although incognito may be the same name for other users in any browser mode of any browser, Google received credit for holding the name as the instant name of a feature when launching the tool in late 2008, a few months after Chrome launched.
An easy way to open an Incognito window with a combination of keyboard shortcuts Ctrl-Shift-N (Windows) or Command-Shift-N (macOS).One way is to click the menu at the top right – three dots straight – and select New Incognito Window from the list.
Incognito’s new window can be seen in a dark background with a “spy” style icon on the left of the three-dot menu. Chrome also reminds users of just what Incognito does and doesn’t always do when a new window opens. The message may be exhausting for ordinary Incognito users, but it can also save function or dignity; it is important for users to remember that Incognito does not prevent ISPs, businesses, schools and organizations from knowing where customers, employees, students, and others have gone on the web or what they want.
The Incognito presentation screen also shows a change – it opens automatically – with the text that third-party cookies will be blocked while in privacy mode. Although cookies are never stored locally as long as the user resides in Incognito, websites have been able to track users’ movements from site to site while within Incognito. Such tracking may be used, for example, to display ads on a user who visits multiple sites on Incognito. This third-party cookie block, which stops such behavior, was first released on Chrome 83 in May 2020.
Google was trying out a new language on Incognito’s Chrome launch page, but it is yet to get to the desktop browser. In the Canary version of Chrome on Android, however, the introduction now defines “What Incognito does” and “What Incognito does not do,” making the mode skills a little more obvious to the user. (Some speculate that the changes were made in response to an ongoing case file in 2020 that Google allegedly continued to track the behavior and movements of users online at Incognito.)
Once the Incognito tab is filled with a website, Chrome continues to remind users that they are in Incognito with a dark address bar and window title.
The link to the existing page can be opened directly in Incognito by right-clicking the link, then selecting the Open Link in the Incognito Window from the resulting menu.
To close the Incognito window, close it like any other Chrome window by clicking the X in the upper right corner (Windows) or the red dot in the top left (macOS).
How to Browse Privately in Microsoft Edge
has borrowed the name of its private browsing mode, InPrivate, from Internet Explorer (IE), a legacy browser that has finally stopped working. InPrivate appeared on IE in March 2009, about three months after Incognito Chrome and three months before Firefox privacy mode. When Edge was first released in 2015 and re-launched as a Chrome Clone in January 2020, InPrivate was also part of the package.
On the keyboard, the Ctrl-Shift-N (Windows) or Command-Shift-N (macOS) combination opens the InPrivate window.
The slowest way to get there is to click the menu at the top right – three dots horizontally arranged – and select New Private Window in the menu.
Edge does a much clearer job of explaining what his private browsing mode does and does not do any of its competitors, with on-screen sections provided to explain what data the browser collects in InPrivate and how the strongest anti-tracking system can. called within mode. In addition, Edge 92 – the current version as of this writing – uses the informal language “What Incognito” and “What Incognito does not do” on its InPrivate screen, something a Chrome desktop has not yet received. .
Microsoft Browser also notes InPrivate when in active mode: the blue oval marked “In Private” on the right side of the address bar joins the fully black screen to ensure users know where they are.
It is also possible to start an InPrivate session by right-clicking the link between Edge and selecting Open in InPrivate Window. That option turns gray when you are in a private browsing session but using Open Link in the new tab does that within the current InPrivate framework.
To stop InPrivate browsing, simply close the window by clicking the X in the top right corner (Windows) or clicking the red dot in the top left (macOS).
Although Microsoft is based on the newly launched Chromium Edge, the same open source project that comes with code to enable Chrome, the Redmond company, Wash. Called “Tracking Prevention,” it works in both standard Edge and InPrivate modes.
To set Block Tracking, select Settings in the menu of the three ellipses on the right, and on the next page, select Privacy, Search and Services. Select one of the three options – Basic, Balanced or Solid – and make sure the tracking switch switch is “on”. If you want InPrivate to remain automatic against malicious tracking – not a bad idea – change Always use “Firm” to disable tracking when browsing InPrivate to “unlock.”
Expert Tip: To Open Edge with InPrivate – instead of opening Edge in normal mode, then launch InPrivate – right-click the Edge icon in the Windows task bar and select a new InPrivate window from the list. There is no one-step way to do this in macOS.
How to make private browsing in Mozilla Firefox
After Chrome released the Incognito trumpet, the non-identical browsers rush to participate. Mozilla added its takeover – called Secret Browsing – about six months after Google, June 2009, with Firefox 3.5.
From the keyboard, a private browsing session can be called using the combination Ctrl-Shift-P (Windows) or Command-Shift-P (macOS).
Alternatively, a private window will open in the upper right menu of Firefox – three short horizontal lines – after selecting a new private window.
The private session window is marked with a purple “mask” icon in the Firefox frames bar. In Windows, the icon to the left of the minimize / magnify / close buttons; On a Mac, the mask squares to the far right of the title bar. Unlike Chrome and Edge, Firefox does not color code at the top of the browser window to indicate that the user is in privacy mode.
Like other browsers, Firefox warns users that private browsing is not the solution to privacy issues but is limited to what prevents them from being saved during a session. “While this does not make you anonymous on your websites or online service provider, it makes it easier to keep your online activity private to anyone else who uses this computer,” we read the warning.
How to browse privately using Apple Safari
Chrome may be more popular with its Incognito than any other browser – not surprisingly, because it is the world’s most popular browser – but Apple Safari was actually the first to introduce private browsing. The term Privacy Browser was first compiled in 2005 to define Safari 2.0 features that limit what the browser saves.
