20 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
20 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
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title = "\"incognito mode\" or \"private browsing\" should be called \"amnesia mode\""
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summary = "it's always been a misnomer. it's not private. it's not hiding your identity or fingerprint in any way. it's just a session without any of your usual cookies, and it clears itself after closing."
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date = 2024-01-16T15:24:00-06:00
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source = "https://mastodon.social/@trwnh/111767734805138077"
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why's it called "incognito mode" or "private browsing mode"? it's always been a misnomer. it's not private. it's not hiding your identity or fingerprint in any way. it's just a session without any of your usual cookies, and it clears itself after closing. it should be called "amnesia mode".
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i guess i'd also accept "ephemeral session" but that probably sounds too technical for most normal people
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> I think it made more sense when people shared computers and accounts. It's private from the other people who use that same browser. But yeah, it could use a better name. I think 'amnesia' and 'ephemeral' both capture the idea that records will be forgotten; bu they don't quite capture that it also doesn't use existing cookies etc. (Particularly for ephemeral.) Even 'incognito' does better there, because it doesn't use your current login cookies for websites. So I'm not sure.
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i see "amnesia" in the sense of like... you start with no memory, and then at the end, you forget everything that happened. kind of like that movie, Memento
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> at some point we were working on a browser [...] which referred to "incognito" tabs as "amnesiac"
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