Google and Facebook are tracking your porn preferences – even in incognito mode | Hacker News Reader

Google and Facebook are tracking your porn preferences – even in incognito mode

thenextweb.com

18 pointssahin12 comments

Clickbait, basically notes that major websites use analytics. Use uBlock/uMatrix everywhere, because Google and Facebook, and a lot more companies, are tracking your preferences in everything.

Different article about same topic discussed 1-2 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20467963 (132 points, 112 comments)

to avoid tracking, get your porn from trackers

The title seems to suggest worse than the report. Can the information collected in incognito mode be traced back to you (assuming you aren’t logged into Google/Facebook).

It seems the only remediation would be for the browser to leak whether you’re using an incognito window, which would result in sites (e.g. paywalled news sites that give you 3 views per month) disallowing incognito entirely.

The comment that the report stems from Microsoft also makes the report feel dodgy; complain about a competitor in ways that sound bad but may not actually be.

> Can the information collected in incognito mode be traced back to you

Absolutely, but not necessarily with Google/FB's tracking systems. Your IP is enough to identify you and join to your other Internet activity, in most cases.

This is why Incognito Mode's New Tab Page says:

     Your activity might still be visible to:
       * Websites you visit
       * Your employer or school
       * Your internet service provider

Sorry I should have asked a better question: do the alleged trackers use low level tools that would bypass incognito (e.g. IP address, fingerprinting) to join your information with your non-incognito profile?

Yes. Browser have been making partial attempts to resist this, but it's an intractable problem in general -- You can't interact with a website without leaking information about yourself. Using a trusted proxy that serves many people can help.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com