this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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Google was already in the middle of a class-action lawsuit regarding the incognito mode, where they were accused of tracking user activity. And, they agreed to settle the lawsuit.

To conclude that and move on, they will have to make the necessary changes to prevent another lawsuit against them.

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[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 69 points 10 months ago (3 children)

No shit.

It's never been a secret what incognito mode does. Websites have always still been able to do whatever they want with your traffic, because the browser doesn't control that in any way.

[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah. But you don't get upvotes so easily by not shouting "Google bad!".

[–] sirdorius@programming.dev 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, this article is pretty bad at explaining the problem here. It's clear that other websites will try to track you, but the important part of this incognito drama is this:

The plaintiffs also accused Google of taking Chrome users' private browsing activity and then associating it with their already-existing user profiles.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/google-agrees-to-settle-in-chrome-incognito-mode-class-action-lawsuit/

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago

Of course they did. It doesn't take any kind of abuse of the browser to do that. It's all on the website side and everyone does that.

Ban most data gathering websites do. But this has literally zero to do with the browser.

[–] AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's not true. If you're intentionally logged in to a website, sure, but tracking without an account requires action on the part of your browser, assuming you're using a VPN. Cookies, ad-IDs, user agent, preferred language, etc. is all information that the browser can decide if it provides or not.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago

I promise none of these people are using a VPN. IP is plenty.

Chrome never claimed it was spoofing any of those details, and spoofing those details without clearly telling the users what they're doing and why would murder the user experience. Their position as a browser had literally no impact on that tracking.