You can choose a private setting when you browse (浏览) the Internet. But be forewarned: It may not afford nearly as much privacy as you expect. That's the finding of a new study.
Major web browsers, such as Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, are often a private-browsing option. It's sometimes referred to as "being incognito". This option lets you surf the Internet browser and saves a record into its history of each page that you visited. And what sites you visit won't affect the suggestions your browser makes the next time you're filling out an online form.
Many people believe incorrectly that the incognito setting broadly protects them. Most believe it even after reading a web browser's explanation of the incognito mode.
For instance, a new study had 460 people read web browsers' descriptions of private browsing. Each person read one of 13 descriptions. Then the participants answered questions about how private they thought their browsing would be while using this tool. The volunteers didn't understand the incognito mode. This was true no matter which browser's explanation they had read. The researchers reported their findings on April 26 at the 2018 World Wide Web Conference in Lyon, France.
More than half of the volunteers thought that if they logged in a Google account through a private window, Google wouldn't keep a record of their search history. Not true. And about one in every four participants thought private browsing hid their device's IP address. That's wrong, too.
Blase Ur was one of the study's authors. He's an expert in computer security and privacy at the University of Chicago in Illinois. "Companies could clear up this confusion by giving better explanations of the incognito mode," his team said. For example, the browsers should avoid vagueness (模糊).The web browser Opera, for instance, promised users that "your secrets are safe". Firefox encourages users to "browse like no one's watching". In fact, someone might be. (If you'd like to know more about the research information, please click here.)
