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Comment by will4274 | Hacker News Reader

> why would you not want this on non-private sessions

Information leaks. You click a link from your email to a news article. The URL for the news article has your email in it. Then you click an ad on the news article. The ad just got your email address.

Worse still - instead of an email address, it's a token that auto signs you in to your account with the news site.

Sites are pretty bad at sanitizing their outgoing referers.

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I don't use anything but web mail (Fastmail) since 2002. I do my banking and email in one browser and my general browsing in a very locked down Firefox (Many about:config hacks, uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, Webmail Ad Block, Privacy Badger, and No Coin) that blocks about everything save the actual content. I also run a Pi-hole. Keeping your actions compartmentalised keeps your privacy better controlled. Nothing is perfect, but keeping things separated is generally a better idea than not doing so.

If you're not aware of it, you might want to look into Qubes[0], it's an OS that uses virtualisation tech to compartmentalise applications from each other (and the host OS). So you can use your browser of choice for all uses, just in different VMs configured to retain/discard data as you want.

[0] https://www.qubes-os.org/

As I read it the parent is for it. He is actually saying it should be always the mode not just for private browsing.

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