Even Google employees joked about pseudo-incognito mode – it can now take revenge

If you open incognito mode in Chrome browser, you want to at least protect your privacy a bit and prevent others from seeing your browsing history. After all, the name suggests that you can surf more safely with it.

Most people are well aware that Incognito mode doesn’t really protect their own data. An internal chat of Google employees has now become public, in which they joke about the function. It gives a look behind the scenes – and shows how ineffective Incognito mode really is.

Does Google pretend privacy?
Class action lawsuit against tech giants

Now Google may even have to legally account for it. There is a lawsuit for damages in the billions. A class action lawsuit is currently pending in the United States against parent company Alphabet Inc., alleging that it secretly collects large amounts of user data, but pretends it is private.

In the course of the lawsuit, an internal chat was released by Google employees, among other things, reports Bloomberg news agency.

The chats show that even within the group there is a lot of criticism about the feature and the misleading name.

Google Employees Joke About Feature: ‘Guy Incognito’

For example, the documents show that in an internal chat by Google engineers, one person wrote, “We need to stop calling it incognito and stop using a spy icon.” He referred to the icon of a spy disguised in sunglasses and a hat and the message “You have gone into incognito mode” when users open a new tab. It falsely suggests to users that they are browsing the web anonymously.

Another contributor joked and responded with a wiki link to a character from The Simpsons. It leads to “Guy Incognito”. He plays a doppelganger of Homer Simpson in the series. “Regardless of the name, the Incognito icon should always be ‘Guy Incognito,'” the employee said with a pinch of salt: “This also accurately reflects the level of privacy it provides.”

The timing of the chat shows how long the feature has been under criticism. The employee’s statement dates from 2018.

“Not really private”: Google was aware of the problem in advance

An email that went directly to Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai should also be a burden to the group. He himself was the driving force behind the development of the feature when the company launched its Chrome browser in 2008.

In the said email, marketing director Lorraine Twohill wrote with an urgent request that Google urgently needs to make incognito mode truly private. “We are limited in how much we can market incognito because he [der Modus] is not really private. That requires very vague and evasive language, which is almost more harmful.”

Twohill’s assessment of the incognito mode’s shortcomings is remarkably candid. Especially when you consider that Google had already been sued at that time.

compensation payments in
threaten with billions

The honest way that Google employees internally talked to each other about Chrome’s incognito mode could now be slapped by Google. This reduces the Group’s chances of winning the lawsuit.

A loss can be costly.

After all, these are damages in the billions. Tens of thousands of Chrome users have complained. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers now has to decide whether they will receive between $100 and $1,000 for the data breaches.

Google itself denies wrongdoing. “Privacy controls have long been built into our services and we encourage our teams to continually discuss and review ideas to improve them,” said company spokesman Jose Castaneda in an email.

Because of hints: The group is not aware of any guilt

Google argues in court files that while incognito mode doesn’t make browsing invisible, users have given the company permission to keep track of their data. “Incognito mode provides users with a private browsing experience, and we’ve been clear about how it works and what it does, while in this case the plaintiffs deliberately misrepresented what we said,” Castaneda said in the email.

In an incognito session, Chrome explicitly warns that web activity for visited websites, employers, and ISPs will still be visible.

Privacy from Google itself
apparently poorly protected

So far, only Google knows what it does with the data it collects when searching in incognito mode. “Some of this will come to light during the negotiations,” said Serge Egelman, director of research for the Usable Security and Privacy Group at the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California at Berkeley.

Egelman said data about where users go online in incognito mode, what they do on certain websites, and what ads they see can be used for conversion tracking, helping advertisers learn how users interact with ads. This is also “probably valuable from a profiling perspective to sell targeted ads.”

The complaining consumers argue that Google’s transparency with regard to data collection is completely inadequate. In a lawsuit, they pointed to an internal suggestion by a Google Chrome product to change the saying on the incognito home screen to “You are NOT protected from Google” instead of “You are protected from other people using this device”. ».