Private browsing is equivalent to creating an ephemeral browser profile everytime. It might get rid of more browser storage, but for how tracking works now-a-days, it is useless. It is only for what you want to store on your disk, not for how you want to be seen to remotes.

I'll admit I may have fallen for "private" browser marketing. Is this representative to current methods?

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org

I assume a subset of these bits could be used, meaning the "unique" or not claim of this test probably doesn't reflect if you can be tracked. I also assume that a VPN would help tremendously.

For that test, as is, I get "unique" every refresh when using Brave Browser. With Safari and Chrome, I get a fail an subsequent sessions.

> I'll admit I may have fallen for "private" browser marketing.

The private claim isn't wrong, the threat model is just your spouse seeing that you watched porn and not at all about the remote party.

> https://coveryourtracks.eff.org

    Platform
    Linux x86_64

    One in x browsers have this value: 5.73

What? They just claim Linux has a marketshare of ~20%?

For all of these values, I think they're going purely by bits rather than occurrences observed or market share.

It's still the easiest way to track users. If it were useless, Google wouldn't be so opposed to blocking 3P cookies in Chrome.

> You can do this trivially in modern browsers: private browsing.

The one that Google keeps tracking? https://www.tomsguide.com/news/going-incognito-in-chrome-doe...

Edit: not just Google. Incognito mode does not prevent websites from tracking you, period.

--- start quote ---

Once these new disclaimers make their way to stable builds of Chrome, you’ll see a message that looks like this when going incognito:

“Others who use this device won’t see your activity, so you can browse more privately. This won’t change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google."

--- end quote ---

I don't use browsers made by ad companies, because I fully expect that browser to stay out of the way of their revenue stream. There are many browsers out there that care about privacy.

Doesn't matter. Companies will keep tracking you in incognito mode.

Are you sure cookies get scrapped after you close a tab? Does opening a single session-based web site in multiple tabs work (eg. logged into Amazon in a private browser)? What browser are you using?

In Chrome and Firefox, all the private windows share a session that gets scrapped when you close them all. Safari keeps them separate.

Yeah idk why there's a law trying to poorly enforce this instead