Chrome Private Mode Not Quite Private

lotuseclat79 · May 18, 2010

Chrome Private Mode Not Quite Private.

Related: Chrome Incognito Tracks Visited Sites.

-- Tom

caspian · May 21, 2010

I have always suspected this.

Carver · May 31, 2010

Well chrome is made by GOOGLE, if I use anything from Google I am very carefull just what I am doing with it. I just got a gmail account but I certainly wouldn't use gmail for anything the least bit sensitive.

Konata Izumi · May 31, 2010

Just found this.

The following revision refers to this bug:
http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=47570

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r47570 | pkasting@chromium.org | 2010-05-18 14:25:38 -0700 (Tue, 18 May 2010) | 8 lines
Changed paths:
M http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chro...me/browser/host_zoom_map.cc?r1=47570&r2=47569
M http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/branches/375/src/chrome/browser/profile.cc?r1=47570&r2=47569
M http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chro.../resource_message_filter.cc?r1=47570&r2=47569

Merge 47568 - Forget zoom levels set/changed in incognito mode when exiting incognito. This mostly reverts r37595.

BUG=43107
TEST=Go incognito. Modify the zoom level for a site. Restart Chrome. That site's zoom level should not reflect the change made in incognito mode.
Review URL: http://codereview.chromium.org/2079010

TBR=pkasting@chromium.org
Review URL: http://codereview.chromium.org/2069010
Click to expand...

and for the explanation by pkasting@chromium.org:

I'd like to add a last comment to people from Slashdot, since some are clearly
reading this, and as an Anonymous Coward there I don't have much chance of being
listened to if I attempt to set the record straight.

I have seen a few people misread comment 11. Let me expand on it:

We originally wrote zoom levels to be dropped on exit from incognito. However, when
adding support for other content controls in 4.1 (e.g. JS, plugins, etc.), we ran
into the problem that all of these are listed in a prefs window, and there's a pretty
clear expectation that if you manually go and change a pref, that change persists
outside incognito mode. Because all the UI for these is tied under the hood to
prefs, we then decided that the most consistent behavior would be for the browser to
preserve, rather than forget, changes like these.

The consequence of this was that for hosts where some setting is not the default, the
hostname was stored in plaintext in your local preferences file. There is no
indication of when/where/how you set the setting, and this setting was never read by
Google or anything nefarious like that. Furthermore, in the specific case of zoom,
there is no UI that displays your host settings, so someone would have needed to open
your Preferences file directly and read through it.

Nevertheless, after more discussion, we later decided that this wasn't consistent
with other incognito behavior. Since we still didn't have a solution to the prefs
issue, we decided to just grey out the options in the main (bubble) UI to change
settings for a particular host when in incognito. You could still manually visit the
options window and change things there, and those changes would still persist. We
left the behavior of zoom alone since there is no UI for it and we didn't want to
simply disable it in incognito mode.

After more discussion today, we hit on the idea (now in bug 44480) of making changes
while in incognito be displayed in italics in the various content settings exceptions
lists. This allows us to support those controls as forget-on-exit-from-incognito
without causing confusion when looking at the prefs window.

Because we intend to make that change, it makes sense to make zoom match that, so on
this bug we have now patched zoom to be how it was written originally, i.e. to forget
zoom levels when exiting incognito mode.

I hope this clarifies things somewhat. In my view, this was a bit of a tempest in a
teapot, and I'm disappointed with the various comments I've seen that ascribe this to
some sort of desire to track user behaviors or lie to users about what's happening in
incognito mode. Part of the reason Chrome is open source and developed publicly is
so that you don't have to take our word that we care deeply about our users and
didn't design Chrome as some sort of secretive data collection vehicle. If you're
too lazy to investigate that for yourself, and find out what the real consequences
were in cases like this, then please also be too lazy to cast aspersions without
knowledge.
Click to expand...

Cudni · May 31, 2010

If you're too lazy to investigate that for yourself, and find out what the real consequences
were in cases like this, then please also be too lazy to cast aspersions without
knowledge.
Click to expand...

I don't why but found this comment naive yet endearing

snowdrift · Jun 1, 2010

Undercover cops never admit to being law enforcement agents, but that doesn't mean they can't arrest you.

http://stadt-bremerhaven.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/doodle.png

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