

Ask HN: Where does Google Chromium in incognito mode get me? - _nato_

I have been using Chromium for a long time, without really thinking objectively about it. I use it in incognito mode 99% of the time, and I am logged out of my google accounts always -- unless logging in to check my email. I am the least paranoid person I know, actually, I just do the above because I want Google to know little about me. However, is this even true? Does my setup do _anything_ for me?
======
dm2
[https://panopticlick.eff.org](https://panopticlick.eff.org)

This tool uses the information sent from your browser in attempt to identify
you among other people who have used the tool. It doesn't use IP.

I used chrome on a virtual machine (with not too much ordinary stuff
installed) to run the test and it said my result was unique among ~3 million.
Then I switched to incognito and the results said that there was one other
match, which I assume was the test I had run previously. Point being, there
was very little difference, which surprised me. Normal chrome had 21 pieces of
identifying info, while incognito had 20, so not too much different.

The NSA has some fancy patents that also use response time and probably tons
of other data if they wanted to try to identify your computer, or just you.
I'm sure mouse-clicks and other seemingly random habits could be used to ID an
individual also.

Best would probably be a VPN combined with a virtual machine with a very clean
version of chrome. Maybe with some privacy extensions installed, but be
careful which ones you choose, not too many and don't choose ones that aren't
used by a lot of people.

------
kh_hk
Install the ad-block plus and Ghostery extensions, just to know (and block)
how much tracker crap companies put on their websites. See, for instance, the
Huffington Post
[http://i.imgur.com/sMIJRL8.png](http://i.imgur.com/sMIJRL8.png) (and it's not
the worst example)

Funnier enough, you will also learn about the bad practice in some sites of
not displaying anything at all if some of these scripts fail to load.

Note that this will not protect your IP being tracked on the servers, but at
least it will do it from third parties.

------
schrodinger
It will keep you out of casual monitoring, but you could still be tracked by
someone determined. As others have stated, you've got a lot of personally
identifiable metrics accidentally leaked when browsing the web.. like OS
version, screen size, plugins, browser version, IP Address, response time,
etc. Incognito mode will prevent the websites you're visiting from being
_sure_ it's you, but they can still infer it. It's probably equivalent to
clearing your history and cookies after every use.

------
smartwater
It saves you the hassle of logging out of all of your accounts, removing
cookies, and deleting browser history. It gives you some plausible
deniability. But your IP address could be used to link your incognito identity
to your real ones.

I recommend using SSH tunneling: "ssh -D 8080 some@vps.org" \- be sure to
enable remote DNS in your browser to prevent leaking your real IP address
through DNS lookups.

