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Comment by tedunangst | Hacker News Reader

Incognito doesn't mean invisible. If I put on a fake mustache and walk around the grocery store, they can still see me. The store manager can still say "hey, the mustache guy is spending a lot of time looking at the lettuce." And yet, I'm incognito. They don't know who I am.

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You just made the same mistake the non-tech users make: Chrome's incognito means that store manager would know who you are, not just that you're there - the fake mustache would do nothing.

I think it's an apt analogy. If the store manager has never seen you before, the store manager would not know who you are at all unless you introduce yourself.

The only thing they would learn about you would be characteristics like height/weight/voice/tattoos etc - your IP address - and could use it to correlate you if seeing you in the future

One definition for incognito is "With one's identity disguised or concealed". A fake mustache is not an incognito, your identifying features are clearly visible. Adding to this, if you made an impression with your fake mustache, and visited the store the next day in a clown nose, they'd recognize you, making your attempts at being in incognito useless.

What do you think the purpose of the fake mustache is?

I don't get your point. I've seen the fake mustache used in popular culture to show a badly executed disguise. Is this to refer to how ineffective the Incognite mode is, seeing how its icon are also obvious disguise tropes, the glasses and the hat?

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