Not sure which news website I should be using for the link, sorry! I’m happy to change it if anyone has a better one.
Google agreed to destroy or de-identify billions of records of web browsing data collected when users were in its private browsing “Incognito mode,” according to a proposed class action settlement filed Monday.
The proposal is valued at $5 billion, according to Monday’s court filing, calculated by determining the value of data Google has stored and would be forced to destroy and the data it would be prevented from collecting. Google would need to address data collected in private browsing mode in December 2023 and earlier. Any data that is not outright deleted must be de-identified.
Most people misunderstand what incognito mode means in the browser. It has nothing to do with anonymous browsing, incognito mode, the only thing it does is delete the browsing data that is saved in the browser and locally, but it does not prevent web pages and search engines from logging the activity on their servers. Extensions like SiteBleacher or Cookie Autodelete do exactly the same thing as browsing in incognito mode. If you want to browse anonymously, at least you can only do it with a VPN and certainly not using Google to search or using it’s services with an account.