If you search for a product- blenders, say-in a private window, you’re not as likely to start seeing cooking supplies show up in web ads over the next few days.įirefox adds a layer of tracking protection to its private browsing mode. But you may also notice less tracking from advertisers. The most obvious change you’ll notice after a privacy browsing session is that it doesn’t show up under the History tab in your browser. If you’re using incognito mode, “At the end of each session your cookies go away and you get a whole new set the next time you start,” Ur says. They also let big advertising companies, such as Google’s DoubleClick, track you from site to site across the web. Cookies have lots of functions, such as letting you go to password-protected sites without logging in each time and keeping track of what you place in a shopping cart. Next time your browser loads a page with elements from a company’s servers, the information is sent back. The browser also stores cookies, which are little files that websites and advertisers embed in websites. That makes it easier for you to retrace your steps and find the same web pages again sometime later.
When you browse the web in a regular, nonincognito window, the browser stores the URL, or web address, of every page you visit and keeps that information even after you close the window you’re in.
