Incognito does not make you invisible

Private browsing, Incognito, InPrivate — the names promise a disappearing act. What they actually do is more modest. When you close the window, that window’s history, cookies, and form fields are thrown away on your computer. The sites you visited still saw you. Your network still carried the traffic. The school, office, or café that owns the Wi-Fi can still have a log.

It is a clean desk, not a disguise. Useful if you are borrowing a computer, shopping for a gift on a shared laptop, or tired of ads following a search. Useless as a hiding place.

What it will not do

• Hide your visit from the website
• Hide your visit from the network in between
• Make downloads or files you saved vanish
• Stop an account you are logged into from knowing it was you

If you need the window to forget you, Incognito is enough. If you need the internet to forget you, it is not. Those are different problems, and the product name pretends they are the same one.