Google Forced To Delete BILLIONS Of INCOGNITO Browsing Records

April 3

Google Forced To Delete BILLIONS Of INCOGNITO Browsing Records

IF YOU STILL hold any notion that Google Chrome’s “INCOGNITO MODE” is a good way to protect your privacy online, now’s a good time to stop.

To settle a years-long lawsuit, Google has agreed to delete “billions of data records” collected from users of “Incognito mode,” illuminating the pitfalls of relying on Chrome to protect your privacy.

Google has agreed to delete “billions of data records” the company collected while users browsed the web using Incognito mode, according to documents filed in federal court in San Francisco on Monday.

The agreement, part of a settlement in a class action lawsuit filed in 2020, caps off years of disclosures about Google’s practices that shed light on how much data the tech giant siphons from its users, even when they’re in private-browsing mode.

Under the terms of the settlement, Google must further update the Incognito mode “splash page” that appears anytime you open an Incognito mode Chrome window after previously updating it in January.

The Incognito splash page will explicitly state that Google collects data from third-party websites “regardless of which browsing or browser mode you use,” and stipulate that “third-party sites and apps that integrate our services may still share information with Google,” among other changes.

Additionally, some of the data that Google previously collected on Incognito users will be deleted. This includes “private-browsing data” that is “older than nine months” from the date that Google signed the term sheet of the settlement last December, as well as private-browsing data collected throughout December 2023.

All told, this amounts to those “billions of data records.” Certain documents in the case referring to Google's data collection methods remain sealed, however, making it difficult to assess how thorough the deletion process will be.