But private browsing may not offer the complete mask of privacy you’re envisioning. When you think of privacy, you likely see yourself searching the web in complete anonymity. Some private browsers even help hide your location. A private browser also limits web tracking - meaning, websites have trouble keeping tabs on you.

When you use a private browser, all browsing history, search history, and cookies get automatically erased. That would create chaos when browsing, with information popping up that might be helpful to another user, but not to you. Multiple users meant many different cookies would be stored on a shared computer. Here’s how private browsing solved the problem. It was primarily designed to make it easier to use shared computers. For example, a web browser could sell user info to third-parties for marketing purposes.įor example, Google’s Incognito mode wasn’t created to mask or hide your identity. But sometimes you might not want that convenience, if storing that data might compromise your privacy. How? When a browser cache web-based content like usernames, passwords, and images, this helps to speeds up the login process. Web browsers can store data about users’ activities to make revisits easy. Hint: Think VPN or virtual private network. For instance, do you know that browsing history can still be accessed in most browsers when you browse in private mode? Chances are, you want privacy and safety when you go online.

It’s important to understand what a private browser does, and does not, do.

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