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Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

bleepingcomputer.com

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Re: Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

#81
post #51
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define plenty. Are among those "plenty" the actual important pages that people want to use? Or some irrelevant pages here and there? And how do you know there are plenty? In fact, even if it is so, how can anyone verify that, even just about your sites? We can merely just trust you.

>the actual important pages that people want to use? Where is this special list of important pages? Are the sites I want to use not important? Does your comment need to be so simultaneously defeatist and hostile?

>Where is this special list of important pages? Are the sites I want to use not important? Does your comment need to be so simultaneously defeatist and hostile?

Or, as I like to call it, pragmatic.

Visits are a power law distribution, 80% of people's visits go to 20% of sites, and so on, recursively. s

So unless e.g. the top 1000 (which may vary depending on country) people want to use are there, e.g. the social media, news sites, booking, video, shopping sites, banking sites, you're just talking about a number of niche websites.

Sites that "still work with JS disabled" are in the minority on those lists.

Essentially you're saying "don't use all those sites with the content/services you want", use all those others that don't have tracking (but which you don't really care for).

E.g. pointing to Diaspora vs Facebook...

The best I've seen people come up with on this front is DDG vs Google.

Re: Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of any way through the about:config editor to do this? I'd hate to have to install yet another browser plugin.

uMatrix is a must have add-on and nothing else comes close to matching its functionality. It pairs well with uBlock Origin (same dev). Add-ons like Decentraleyes is also good as it prevents persistent tracking from shared web libraries, like Google ajax, that everyone seems to use... it's free and widely available for a reason. Google is also working to update Chrome APIs that will cripple privacy centric add-ons and…

which is why you should switch to firefox asap.

Re: Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about passing laws which forbid tracking users like this and levying steep, business-ending fines against the companies who don't step in line?

No problem. All your favourite online services are no longer free though, what a bummer. Will it be a lite, regular or premium Google maps subscription? How about Facebook Messenger?

In your model I have a choice to opt out of tracking. Where is the downside?

Re: Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

#85
post #15

Can this fight ever be won? If you've been browsing the internet for more than 5 minutes you already have cookies from some of the major ad networks. Therefore if you do not have cookies from the major ad networks, you're either a brand-new device or an incognito browser. All that is left to do is get in bed with the ad network to ask them if they have good cookies for this session. As it so happens most of the compa…

In the same way that ublock is a must-have extension for many people, I won't browse without cookieAutoDelete [0]. Mostly I don't bother authenticating with websites anymore, and (I think about 3 maybe? And I just reauthenticate when I want to use those) and for mobile browsing I mostly use Firefox Focus [1]. The ad networks are down to browser fingerprinting now, which will be devastatingly accurate but realistically be the next frontier in the privacy war. I habitually roll IP addresses from different VPS service providers but I'm not sure there's much more an end user can do currently. Fascinated to see how this front will develop - if things like GDPR are coming into effect, then it's only a matter of time before a gratuitous misuse of data is closed in on, though I suspect it's too late for the current generation.

[0] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

[1] - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/focus

Re: Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

#86
post #48
post #15

Can this fight ever be won? If you've been browsing the internet for more than 5 minutes you already have cookies from some of the major ad networks. Therefore if you do not have cookies from the major ad networks, you're either a brand-new device or an incognito browser. All that is left to do is get in bed with the ad network to ask them if they have good cookies for this session. As it so happens most of the compa…

What is nytimes.com using now to detect incognito? Enabling filesystem in incognito used to work until a few days ago.

The article says they are using the quota trick.

Re: Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

#87
post #30

This is annoying so I just use fresh browser profile every time I encounter such site, i.e. have a short-cut for: $ cat ~/bin/chrome-new #!/bin/sh TMPDIR=`mktemp -d /dev/shm/chrome-XXXXX` google-chrome --user-data-dir=$TMPDIR --no-first-run --no-make-default-browser "$@" rm -rf $TMPDIR

In FF, this seems to be solved with the mechanism of containers and extensions like ‘Temporary Containers.’

Re: Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

#88
post #84

Seems like the TWTF is that in normal browsing mode, sites are allowed to use considerably more than 120MB of "temporary" storage on the filesystem.

I agree; by default it shouldn't be so much. (Maybe the user could configure it (to any range between zero and 4 GB, perhaps), but even then, the limit should not differ for incognito mode unless the user configures it the same.)

Re: Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

#89

OK, this article was not what I expected. I use incognito mode whenever doing online banking, searching for medical information, etc. I don’t care if a web site knows I am in incognito mode. Indeed, I think it is a web site’s right to know because they may need to enforce free access quotas, etc.

I think they would have no right to USE YOUR COMPUTER to enforce such quotas, please.

Re: Google Chrome Incognito Mode Can Still Be Detected

#90
post #15

Can this fight ever be won? If you've been browsing the internet for more than 5 minutes you already have cookies from some of the major ad networks. Therefore if you do not have cookies from the major ad networks, you're either a brand-new device or an incognito browser. All that is left to do is get in bed with the ad network to ask them if they have good cookies for this session. As it so happens most of the compa…

> Therefore if you do not have cookies from the major ad networks, you're either a brand-new device or an incognito browser.

Or Brave.

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