Google Settles Massive Lawsuit – If You’ve Ever Used ‘Incognito Mode’ This Is Required Reading

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When you want to privately browse the web, you probably switch your Chrome browser to “Incognito” mode, believing your activity stays between you and the sites you visit.

After all, according to Google Support, “In Incognito, none of your browsing history, cookies and site data, or information entered in forms are saved on your device. This means your activity doesn’t show up in your Chrome browser history, so people who also use your device won’t see your activity. Websites see you as a new user and won’t know who you are, as long as you don’t sign in.”

Perfectly private, right?

Not really.

According to Blaze Media, Google has agreed to settle a major class action privacy lawsuit accusing the company of tracking users’ browsing activity even when using the Chrome browser’s “Incognito” private mode.

The lawsuit filed in 2020 in the U.S. District Court for Northern California alleged that Google misled consumers into believing that enabling Incognito mode stopped the company from collecting data on websites they visited. However, the complaint stated that Google analytics tools, third-party plug-ins and apps continued gathering user information to optimize ads and site traffic.

Plaintiffs in the case alleged that Google’s ability to track users has resulted in the search engine becoming an “unaccountable trove of information” with information about users’ friends, hobbies, favorite foods, shopping habits and “potentially embarrassing things” that people may look for online, according to Reuters.

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