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Comment by quantumsequoia | Hacker News Reader

I feel like you're imagining scenarios you experience in a developed country. This is not representative of most people Google users in the world

Plenty of people use shared computer, especially in environments with low financial resources (ie people in developing economies, low income families in developed countries, etc). This accounts for hundreds of millions of not billions of people in the world

It's unrealistic to expect all these people to have a non-shared computer to use, and unrealistic to imagine the shared computer to be set up by someone tech savvy enough to create separate profiles for people.

If I were to pick a random library or local school in South America or Asia for example, I would bet they have a shared computer where you just sit down at a logged in windows profile

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> unrealistic to imagine the shared computer to be set up by someone tech savvy enough to create separate profiles for people.

I don’t really buy this. The tech kid in the village will explain that if abla doesn’t want nene to see her mail every time then abla should use the “new private window” button when she turns on the computer.

There’s no “basic human instinct” to be able to log into mail which this change goes against. Everyone had to be taught how to open the browser in the first place. The instructions have simply changed.

I don't understand how this even helps... if the attacker (nene?) is the person who owns the computer, there is no way that "new private window" is somehow going to protect you.

If the attacker controls the computer, logging out won't help you either. First thing I'd do as an attacker is install a key logger to get the password. I assume that people who use shared computers don't have 2FA enabled.

This is true at workplaces in the US, even! Only some of the PCs have badge login where I work, rest are permanently logged in to a public account.

Or even if you're just not wealthy. You could use computers at the library/school. You could only have one computer in your household (like so many of us were familiar with in the 90's). It is a bit absurd to think that everyone lives like us tech geeks where we all know more, dedicate more time and money to tech, and are going to just have more tech in our households. I think a common issue we face is not realizing that others live in worlds that we do not experience, even from the periphery (covid was a good example of this. Groups aren't homogeneous and many don't actually know someone who died of covid and someone else knows several. Reality isn't what we see happening because we have limited views).

If you are using a shared machine, then using a temporary session isn't enough anyway. You should be using a private window.

Temporary session are a weak, half-arsed solution. The author of the post is complaining because they're what he's used to, not because they're actually useful.

I'm curious how much of that today would be phone rather than shared computer.

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