Reminds me of the incognito hand puppet meme

Chrome now won’t open an incognito window unless you’re signed into a regular window.

If you try, it just opens a regular window and tells you to sign in.

Are you talking about the “Make Chrome your own” page that walks you through a few customization options before asking if you want to sign in? You can just select “No thanks” and you’re not signed in. Incognito windows work just fine.

Or are you talking about the “Set up your new Chrome profile” screen that pops up when you make a new profile? It shows two options: Sign in [to Google] and “Continue without an account”. “Continue without an account” just has you name the new profile to distinguish it from any others you may have and then lets you start using it. Incognito windows work just fine.

This is Chrome on the desktop by the way.

As someone who’s not used Chrome for a while, what does it mean to be “signed into a regular widow”? Does it mean signed in to a Google account with cookies that can be seen by a regular browser tab, or is there some login process to the actual browser itself these days?

Yeah, I got signed out when the new tracking updates went live, figured I’d just use incognito.

But I couldn’t even open an incognito window, it kept bringing up a normal one and saying I had to sign in to use chrome.

So I downloaded Firefox.

Sign in to what though? That’s what I still don’t understand, I’ve never used a browser that had a mandatory account (except maybe AOL in the 90s but that wasn’t really a browser)…

But of course, downloading Firefox is definitely the right choice. :)

ares35
link
fedilink
21Y

they are claiming that you have to be signed into chrome, the browser, in order to open an incognito window.

yea, it sounds a little crazy. i don’t use chrome, so i can’t confirm that’s the case. i haven’t run into any articles claiming this either, just this post and one other elsewhere awhile back that does.

OK then this is my culture shock because I’ve never “signed in” to a browser in my life. All I want to know is what are people signing in to?

jherazob
link
fedilink
21Y

Likely related to that lawsuit they’re dealing with

Jaysyn
link
fedilink
11Y

Works just fine in Chromium.

Works even better in Firefox.

“Trust us. It’s just necessary so we can make sure we’re not tracking you.”

“How else would we know our tracking data didn’t include you? We just want to be sure.”

Create a post

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

  • Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
  • Don’t promote proprietary software
  • Try to keep things on topic
  • If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
  • Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
  • Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

  • 0 users online
  • 57 users / day
  • 383 users / week
  • 1.5K users / month
  • 5.7K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 2.97K Posts
  • 74.6K Comments
  • Modlog