My name is Guy Incognito

75 comments

Incognito is only good for one reason: Not having those sites in the browsing history.
- As someone else put it, it's for making sure your wife doesn't get suspicious of the weird ads you're getting, and when she checks the browser history it's clean.
  Meanwhile Google, your ISP, and the NSA all know you're looking at freaky old lady bondage porn.
  
  Yes but I trust the NSA to safeguard the integrity of the National Dick Pic Database. I can't say the same for my ISP.
  
  Except some sites seem to use your IP, so if you're both using the same WiFi, you're going to get ads for other party. And for anyone else who used the same WiFi, too
- It's handy when you need to make sure that someone else can access a url ok without having to sign in to the website or anything. If you can immediately see the page in incognito mode without signing in, they'll have no problem
  
  I remember having to use an incognito browser for testing at work one time, and it felt very wrong to pull it up on my work laptop instead of the personal laptop.
  
  The pile of crap that is docusign will only work for me in incognito mode.
  I contacted support and they suggested I tried it and it works, so they closed the case
  🤦‍♂️
- I use it to get around website article limits when they try to force me to sign up.
  
  Websites with actual web devs block and track usage with ip instead of cookies/cache, nothing a vpn can't stop tho. More reliable to is to the way back machine on archive.org. Can also use a browsers reader mode to get around it too sometimes.
- And even then, those sites can easily be retrieved by someone committed to finding them
  
  And like the traffic at home through Adguard Home I see logs. More competent networks elsewhere will certainly be able to see what you're doing.
  
  back in the day (before chrome or incognito mode) I used to manually delete specific history items, individual cookies and temporary internet files one by one to leave no trace, while not making anything look suspicious, all so my nosy brother wouldn't stumble on any evidence and use it to mock me

"privately" "chrome" pick one
- I'd rather not.
  
  Well they're mutually exclusive so good luck

I use incognito so I can search for the word pork sandwich without it autocompleting to a pornhub video of fem dom bdsm.
- I use incognito so I can search for some completely normal thing that I'm embarrassed I don't already know
  
  Ya got me pegged.
  ... Which incidentally I also use incognito for.
  
  ME.
  
  Spelling basic works like experience or similar
- I think you've got when to use regular and incognito mixed up.
  Everyone knows you should be using Firefox private mode to look up pork sandwiches.
- Yeah. Though also so I can not be treated like I regularly search stupid questions I have

ISP can’t see pages. They can see domains or IPS but that’s it.
- They can’t even reliably see domains when you use HTTPS, because some IP addresses serve many domains.
  
  That's not entirely true. It's only very recently that browsers have started using a new system called Encrypted Client Hello which hides the domain of the request. Prior to this all requests needed too have the Host field unencrypted so the receiving server knows which certified to respond with. I imagine there's still quite a few servers which don't support the new setup still.
  
  Most ISPs are also the default DNS resolver for a lot of people, so they see the domain you're requesting an IP for.
  
  They can still (mostly) sniff SNI for now which gives them a domain even when the IP isn't unique.

It's worse than that:

I use incognito so I can sign into multiple accounts on the same websites at once.
- Firefox containers is your friend. It's way better. I can sign into dozens of separate pages for different clients in a single browser window in different tabs if I want.
  
  Is that a permanent solution or do I have to set it up every time? I just use profiles. about:profiles there you can setup a new one and launch it in a new window. I like to theme the windows in a different color to not get confused. Bright red is for 18+
  
  Or Brave profiles
- FYI most browsers have built-in options for user profiles, so you can have that benefit without the second account on a given website being logged out every time you restart the browser.
  incognito is still handy when you’re logging in to a website with a lesser-used second account, though.

Especially when you do this, considering a lot of privacy extensions are disabled by default in incognito mode (at least in FF), so there's less blocking of tracking elements.
(Also, unless you change your DNS provider or use a (proper) VPN, I believe your ISP sees everything no matter what, though I could be wrong about the latter.)
On the other hand, if this is a woosh situation & it's a joke, well, then, eh, I've seen funnier. ¯_ (•_•) _/¯
- This is only true if you set your browser that way. On firefox I have all extensions be able to work in incognito. I believe you can do this on chrome too but I don't use that.
  
  This is why I said "by default".
- HTTPS sends the domain in plaintext with SNI. Has to work that way due to IPv4 address exhaustion.
- Sometimes having those privacy extensions make you a lot easier to fingerprint.
  
  Not if you randomize a few things, than your fingerprint keeps geeting unique but different each time !

Technically incorrect unless you use http for some weird reason. The ISP can see the domain only, and (afaiu) not even that if encrypted client hello is used. At least kinda: they still see the IP which is not always unique.
- Yes, this is why you should use DNS over TLS. My router signal to every DHCP client that it is the DNS resolver, and internally use DoT/dnssec to query IPs. It also intercepts every request on DNS port in case of some DNS are hard-coded on some devices.
  
  DNS over TLS won't save you thanks to SNI. As there is a huge shortage of IPV4 addresses, same IP addresses serve multiple hostnames, and to provide a working encryption, TLS handshake includes the requested hostname in plain text so that SNI can be used to determine which certificate should be used. That plaintext hostname is something your ISP can easily log.
  Rule of thumb is, Https does not provide anonymity, only encryption.
- But the IP can also sometimes be meaningless if there are proxies or vhosts used.

As soon as Chrome first launched incognito mode, it immediately felt like the "Alert Google to start tracking you" mode.
- start tracking you
  As if they ever stopped..

Homer? Who is Homer?
- Oh, my God, this man is my exact double! That dog has a fluffy tail!
  
  Tehehehe here puff!
- homer? i hardly know 'er

A simple spell, wish it was effective.

NextDNS

The simple solution if you don't want your history to be seen is to have one account per user on your computer.
- Threat model. Most people never need that protection, but anonymization in front of their ISP etc
- Doesn't solve the autocomplete issue when you're trying to show someone something. I also don't get ads for things I searched for while in a private window. And don't forget how useful it is when you're logging into some of your accounts when it's not your machine, or logging into two accounts at once.

Chrome + duckduckgo!
Yeah I'm not so naive to think it actually makes a difference.
- Chrome is garbage spyware. Use Firefox.

75 comments