One of the standout announcements made by Google at this year’s I/O back in May was the arrival of Incognito Mode on the Google Maps app.
The feature, a key part of Google’s focus on privacy, would, for the first time, allow users of the popular maps application to not have their location information as well as any searches they make stored by Google.
That is exactly how Incognito Mode, as we know it on the Chrome browser where it has been available for over a decade, functions.
“You can easily turn on Incognito mode by selecting it from the menu that appears when you tap your profile photo, and you can turn it off at any time,” Google’s Director of Product Management in its Data Protection Office, Eric Miraglia, writes in the blog post announcing the feature’s availability.
Just as is the case with Incognito Mode on the Chrome browser, turning it on does not explicitly guarantee a user privacy from other apps and services (including Google’s own) that they use as well as any tools used by their internet service providers (ISP) to monitor internet traffic. It does not mask or anonymize web traffic. You’ll still need the Tor browser or a decent VPN app for that.
Incognito Mode, however, has your back if all you’re worried about is your significant other finding out where you really were when you lied to them that you were going on a work trip.
Incognito Mode has also been available on YouTube for over a year now.
Talking about YouTube, the popular content platform is getting the auto-delete feature that was promised at Google I/O 2019.
YouTuber users are now able to choose for how long their history on the platform is kept – until they choose what to do with it, in 3 months or in 18 months – directly through the YouTube app or through the universal Google services activity control page. Easy.
Also making its way to devices is the ability to just strike a conversation with the Google Assistant and ask it to make some changes in the privacy settings like deleting any records of your conversations with it.
