Google’s ‘Incognito’ feature is famous for allowing porn fans to visit smut sites without leaving a record of the sexy surfing in their internet history.
So we can only imagine all the shady, sordid and secretive uses people will find for a new Incognito Mode that’s just been rolled out for Google Maps.
Earlier this year, Google said the famous ‘porn mode’ was coming to Maps and it’s now available on Android, with iOS due to follow soon.
‘We’re excited to announce that Incognito mode is rolling out for Android users on Google Maps,’ Google wrote.
‘When you turn on Incognito mode, your activity in Maps – like the places you search or get directions to – won’t be saved to your Google Account.’
Enable the new option and Maps will stop saving your search history, record what you browse for or send you notifications.
The feature will also stop the app from keeping a log of your ‘location history’ or details of any data you’ve used to personalise Maps.
Incognito Mode was initially launched on Google’s Chrome browser in 2008 and it was introduced to YouTube earlier this year.
You can toggle on Incognito Mode by tapping on your profile picture in Google Maps and enabling the option.
‘When you turn on Incognito mode in Maps, your Maps activity on that device, like the places you search for, won’t be saved to your Google Account and won’t be used to personalize your Maps experience,’ said Eric Miraglia, director of product management in Google’s privacy and data protection office, in a blog post.
‘Our goal has always been to create products that are simple, helpful, and intuitive. It’s no different with privacy and security: managing your data should be just as easy as making a restaurant reservation, or using Maps to find the fastest way back home.
‘Making these controls consistent across our core products will help them become more familiar, and we hope, even easier to use. Today, we’re sharing a few more updates on our progress toward this goal.’
Porn lovers around the world use Google Chrome’s incognito mode to hide their tracks when surfing for smut.
But in 2017, a top Google engineer claimed this face-saving functionality was actually designed with a much more wholesome purpose in mind.
Darin Fisher, vice president of Chrome at Google, has insisted the incognito option was designed to help people hide a different kind of secret from their partners.
He told Thrillist that Google engineers first imagined it would be used by men who wanted to buy wedding rings without alerting their partner.
The notorious porn mode was intended to let users ‘pause’ their web activity without having to clear the browser history, he continued.
It was also intended to be useful for people who share computers to use the internet without building up cookies – the name for tiny files downloaded when you visit websites which allow them to remember your preferences and how many times you’ve visited.
If you believe Google, the fact that it lets porn-pickers hide their tracks was an unintentional quirk of its design.
Fisher also warned users that Chrome could not hide their smutty shame entirely.
He said: ‘When you launch the Incognito tab there’s this disclaimer there where we really try to help make it really clear to people that your activity is certainly still visible to the websites you visit and could be visible to your employer, to your school your, and to your ISP [internet service provider] of course’
One engineering student claimed that incognito mode failed him by exposing his porn-watching habits.
And a tech expert went one step further and claimed that details of every website you visit using incognito mode could be accessed and released by hackers.
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