Reviewing the “Privacy Mode” Browser Debate
Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Features, News, Tips
ArsTechnica has an excellent article discussing a Stanford research project that was conducted regarding browser “privacy” modes. In Chrome, this is called Incognito mode. For Firefox, it is called Private Browsing. In Internet Explorer it’s called InPrivate. Despite the label for it, this method of using the web is a bit misleading by claiming it offers protections against companies mining data from browsing.
We’ve got to step back and look at this from a different perspective here: when we are browsing the internet, we’re leaking data about ourselves all over the place. The web is a two way street: from the moment you start using it you are inputting data about yourself. You open a browser – regardless of the mode – and you start searching, logging in to services and clicking on links.
A major problem also appears to be add-ons and extensions in the browser, since they are capable of saving data themselves. I had previously talked about Google being very careful to look over extensions before adding them to the Official Extensions site, but perhaps they are only concerned about extensions that have potential elevation privileges that can attack a PC.
So perhaps in all of this internet business we have lost an element of privacy. There is still some degree of anonymity, but it may not last much longer. Some believe we should get rid of all anonymous use of the internet in order to legitimize it – but can that really be done?
