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$5 billion Google lawsuit over ‘incognito mode’ tracking moves a step closer to trial
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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Am I reading this right? As far as I can see, the complaint seems to be that Google would be "tracking" people even if they browse in any browser's incognito mode.
Of course they do. If I open a private window in Firefox, and then login to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, or any other website, these websites can try to track me. How would any browser control what happens or doesn't happen on the server side of things?
These plaintiffs would be better off sueing the companies of these websites for ignoring privacy laws and continuing to add tracking scripts to their sites.
Yes, there are browsers that try to send as little personal information as possible, like the Tor Browser, but even that one can't disable a Facebook server's internal logging data - how could it? All modern browsers make it quite clear what their respective incognito mode does - and what it doesn't do.
That’s precisely what these people are doing. They’re not suing Google because Chrome doesn’t prevent these sites from building profiles and tracking users even while in Incognito Mode, but because Google themselves are engaging in such privacy invasive tactics.
I think we might agree on the last part, but that's exactly the point of my comment. If these people are suing Google for privacy invasion tactics, all the more power to them.
But the headline infers the opposite: "lawsuit over ‘incognito mode’ tracking". This reads like the plaintiffs don't understand what this "incognito mode" actually does.