#Does Google watch you in Incognito?

In the past weeks, the $5B lawsuit that Google faced was all over the news: it claimed that Google is tracking their users even if they use Incognito mode with their Google Analytics and Ads Manager services. Let’s try to find out what happened!

3 people who filed this lawsuit against Google “on behalf of all of those Google subscribers” claim that the company was collecting data and tracking users even in the Incognito mode. The lawsuit is built around the fact that by using Ads Manager and Analytics services Google was collecting “user’s IP address…, what the user is viewing, what the user last viewed, and details about the user’s hardware”. This lawsuit is seeking at least $5000 compensation for each violation of “millions” of users.

However, according to “How private browsing works in Chrome” in Google support, the main point about Incognito mode is that the other people who use the same device won’t be able to access the history of what you’ve visited. An Incognito tab in Chrome doesn’t have any saved cookies, passwords, or any other autofill. Moreover, almost any data that you generate during the session won’t be saved (except your downloads). But what is really important is that Google claims that users’ activity still might be visible for internet providers, search engines, and web pages which you visited or signed in, including 3rd party services like Google Analytics or Ads Manager. And even though the Incognito session does not reveal all of your details, the information that was generated during the current session can be visible.

If we combine both points from above, it is clear that the lawsuit was set more as a symbolic gesture — the lawsuit refers to points as unlawful, but they were explained clearly by Google. We understand that it is likely that news might not show the full picture, therefore we don’t want to conclude anything until the end of the case. The only message that we want to spread is to cross-check the information that is available (like on Google support!) before doing any conclusions on how the Big Tech works! 🙂

How often do you use Incognito Mode? Did you know how it works?