this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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me_irl

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

Incognito mode is such a terrible choice of name for this feature, and Firefox's "private browsing" name is almost as bad.

To the average non-techie user, 'incognito' implies being anonymous. And when you go anonymous then nothing you do is linked to your real identity, right?

Wrong.

In real-world analogy terms, it's more like using a pen-name as an author. Members of the public might not know the person behind the mask, but your publisher (ISP) and your agent (Google) certainly do.

Pretty obvious why people would get the wrong idea.

As a developer, my primary use-case for incognito is a new session to test a site with clean state, or - in absolutely dire circumstances - to cheat at Wordle.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Do people not call it porn mode anymore? When it first came out, there was a lot of chatter about people not getting busted for their porn tastes anymore.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

New incognito tabs literally have a notice explaining what incognito mode does and doesnt do. People just need to read.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

explaining bad behavior doesn't justify bad behavior

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Agreed. Amnesia mode would be a much better name, but I feel if Firefox changed to it some uninformed users might thing Chrome's Incognito mode was somehow safer.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Yeah, naming things is really difficult!

The most truthful thing to call it would be "Temporary Session" but that name requires an understanding of what a 'session' is, in terms of a container that scopes your locally-stored browsing data. It's immediately comprehensible to tech-types, but probably meaningless to the average user.

There's not really any name that can accurately and succinctly describe what Incognito or private browsing actually does in a way that a normal person will understand from the name alone, but Amnesia mode is a good suggestion at one!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't think my girlfriend knows my pseudonym though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

yes, I do, Richard.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Incognito, is it good for protecting my privacy? No. Is it good at keeping whatever random porn I was looking up earlier from auto completeing after the first letter in the middle of my stream as I am trying to Google something unrelated? Yes. Yes it do be

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But Incognito mode is protecting your privacy big time! Just towards the people living in your house or otherwise using your device, not your ISP etc.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I thought this was pretty clear from the beginning. As far as I can remember, the mode point blank told you what it's for.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You should double bag it by also using a second browser.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I see you like to live dangerously. Have a completely separate account on your computer for porn.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Put your porn on a separate hard drive, then just hotswap them whenever you want to see tiddies

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Or just install Tails to a USB and boot to it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The implications of using Tails and Tor to view pron…

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, I'm not familiar with Tails, what's the implication?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Tails is a privacy Linux version that runs from memory, and when you shut the computer down, everything you’ve done is gone. It comes stock with Tor, which you can use to access onion sites (the dark web.)

There’s only one kind of porn people have to go to the dark web for :c

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Oh, gotcha, thanks for the explanation. I guess somewhere back we crossed the line from paranoid secrecy to criminal secrecy

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, TOR immediately became the place to find horrible abuse videos, in the like early 00s.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Makes sense. I usually think of tor as a tool to get around government censorship, especially in countries where internet usage is strictly regulated, but of course that's a double-edged sword.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Keep going, I'm almost there.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, why? How would that help over just using incognito?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Because sometimes ~~we~~ other people forget to open in a private tab