Chrome For Android's Incognito Mode Saves Some of the Sites You Visit 69
An anonymous reader writes: A newly found bug in Google Chrome for Android means incognito mode really isn't as locked-down as it's designed to be. Some sites you visit while using the privacy feature are still saved, and can be retrieved simply by opening the browser's settings. Google Chrome for Android has had incognito mode since February 2012. Here is Google's official description of the feature: "If you don't want Google Chrome to save a record of what you visit and download, you can browse the web in incognito mode."
So, in other words... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So, in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because you have checked the following In Chrome settings:
* Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar
* Enable phishing and malware protection
Incognito mode doesn't do much other than [tries] not write to local browser history or store cookies. But it fails at that too.
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If I'm browsing incognito and click links to open in new windows, sometimes I'll look and find I seem to have lost the incognito protection. Not sure if this is by design or not, but regardless it's stupid and deceptive.
Also, incognito or not, Google is sapping your browsing habits and history. Only way to avoid this is to not use android.
Don't use Chrome or the default browser on Android you mean. Android is the best phone OS in the history of the Universe so far, literally. Android is Linux.
Firefox is still always the right choice on all platforms. I hope they never screw this up. If they do, you will have to use an older version until they unscrew it. Chrome is all-around weak unless you are on a Mac and for some reason want Chrome's built-in Flash player. Other than that, Chrome is nothing.
If you don't at least have Firefox install
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I start to roll my eyes when those same people are 'fans' of Democrats.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why the hell is incognito saving "allow full screen"?
the assertion is bugs are shallow. This fixed (Score:3)
The assertion that ESR makes is that when many people look at a bug, for one of them it will be an "easy" bug, someone will see the issue quickly, and it can therefore be fixed quickly. This bug is already fixed, so it supports his assertion.
Compare IE. The bugs in IE handling of "Vary" were well known and documented for FIVE YEARS before it was partially fixed. As another example, for over a decade, servers had to speak http 1.0 to IE and http 1.1 to every other browser because IE's handling of http wa
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Didn't we have a recent story where a Firefox bug was fixed that dated back 14 years [slashdot.org]?
16 months until fixed. If Chrome dev were open ... (Score:2)
The bug you refer to took Google 16 months to fix. That's the measurement being discussed in the famous ESR quote. If Chrome were developed b an open community, Adblock Plus (or anyone else) could have fixed it sooner, rather than waiting for Google to do it.
How many bugs exist is an entirely different question, how soon bugs are noticed is a third question. My experience (20 as a professional developer) suggests that bugs are noticed right away when you have a good automated test suite, and the code
Oops. Duh. Ignore the first line of my post. (Score:2)
Oops, I said "it took Google 16 months to fix." No, that was a Firefox bug. It took the Firefox team about 16 months. So that's an example where OSS wasn't super-fast, though it was much faster than the 5-10 years it sometimes takes to fix known problems in IE.
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The Firefox problem I refer to had several components, one of them was a bug that was first reported on Bugzilla in April 2001, and remained unfixed for 14 years despite being in an open source project.
Wait, what? (Score:4, Informative)
Here is Google's official description of the feature: "If you don't want Google Chrome to save a record of what you visit and download, you can browse the web in incognito mode."
What if I don't want Google to save a record of what I visit and download?
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What if I don't want Google to save a record of what I visit and download?
Then you're screwed, because they'll save what they want regardless of what you want.
I am not one bit surprised that their "incognito" mode tracks and saves stuff. After all, citizen, those ads aren't going to sell themselves.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Funny)
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Here is Google's official description of the feature: "If you don't want Google Chrome to save a record of what you visit and download, you can browse the web in incognito mode."
What if I don't want Google to save a record of what I visit and download?
Opt out. Google provides tools to enable it. https://support.google.com/ads... [google.com]. Note that you can find that page by clicking "Privacy" at the bottom of http://www.google.com/ [google.com] and then following the links embedded in the explanation of the issues.
And, yes, Google takes opt outs very seriously. A Google service found to be ignoring the opt outs would be considered to have a critical, don't-go-home-until-it's-fixed bug.
(I'm a Google engineer. I'm in no way an official spokesman, and speaking only for mysel
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I understood that the opt out Google offered was for showing of targeted ads, not for the tracking. Am I wrong?
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I understood that the opt out Google offered was for showing of targeted ads, not for the tracking. Am I wrong?
There are separate controls for both, ads and analytics.
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I was reading about this earlier. The article indicated that the bug exists in Chromium as well. Chromium is open source. Chrome is the closed source variant. This doesn't make the OP any less of an idiot but the bug exists in the open source version as well as far according to the article. I have not, of course, read this particular article. I'm not a heretic.
These can be removed (Score:2)
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But the whole point of the Incognito mode is that the browser does not save anything for any site so you don't have to Clear and Erase manually.
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Not acceptable. Shouldn't have to find every website ever in the universe, all their affiliates, all their hosters of various blah blah blah.
I'm not cross though- this is pretty obviously just a bug related to a recent feature. I get complaints like "this browser shouldn't be pinging google ever" and such (the answer there being to not use Chrome), but this thing is just a temporary oversight.
As the man said (Score:5, Funny)
Any sufficiently advanced malware is indistinguishable from a bug.
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Google's entry into the underhanded C contest?
History too (Score:2)
It's been known that URLs you visit in incognito mode on Android show up in auto-suggest when typing in an URL manually in normal mode as well. Has nobody else noticed this?
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You would have to turn off check URLs for malware or whatever it's called -- Google reports incognito URLs back to its malware system. Same for offering to translate the page.
another disaster (Score:2)
Chrome Beta (Score:2)