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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Google has tons of valid issues with their privacy, but honestly I don't think the ridiculousness of the Incognito Mode lawsuit has any merit.

The description of Incognito Mode was always very clear that the client wasn't tracking you, but servers could still track you. The fact that Google has another product, Google Analytics, that they offer any website developer that want to put it on their site, does not mean their original description of Incognito Mode was inaccurate.

Especially as a technologist, it irks me when I see journalists deliberately obfuscating what actually goes on with Incognito Mode.

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I might be inclined to agree somewhat, except for the situation described in the article.

It's one thing if somebody raised internal concerns about possible misconceptions and it was ultimately decided that it wasn't likely.

It's another issue when those concerns are important enough to reach the CEO of Google-sized company, and that CEO then decides not to do anything lest they attract any attention. This is particularly true when dealing with something like a privacy mode.

A more accurate front and center warning that servers including those run by google can and will try to track you.

Wasnt what they wrote though.

I actually think that's less accurate. Google on the server side isn't in any preferential position, better or worse, than any other server-side analytics.

That's why I think this lawsuit is such bullshit, in that many of the "recommendations" in these comments are saying Google server technologies should specifically get called out (or worse, notified when a user is using Incognito Mode, which actually would be a gross privacy violation), when the whole point is that Chrome's Incognito Mode isn't any different that Safari or Firefox's Private Browsing, so why should Chrome call out something about Google's specific server-side analytics?

Google on the server side can see that you are using incognito. It could choose not to track you out of respect for the choice it knows you made. It instead does the exact opposite.

> Google on the server side can see that you are using incognito

No, that's the whole point, Google on the server-side (or any other server-side components) shouldn't be able to know you're in Incognito. Chrome already goes to great lengths to try to hide the fact you're in Incognito to servers, because many servers try to block content if they could detect you're in Incognito.

So the only other option would be to only let Google server-side services know you're Incognito, and that actually would be a gross violation of privacy.

But the warning does say that:

Your activity might still be visible to:

Websites you visit

Your employer or school

Your internet service provider

Might be is a lie. Are visible is accurate.

so all ISPs or web servers keep un-anonymized logs? What about pluralistic.net?

It's not a lie. Chrome doesn't know which ISPs and web servers retain logs or not, so it says might.

All they need to do is to add a note under servers to say "including google's, which will do their best to deanonymize you" and the lawsuit will have no merit.

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