Be careful, your understanding of incognito mode in Firefox may be wrong and that could be costing you
Be careful, your understanding of incognito mode in Firefox may be wrong and that could be costing you
All the incognito browser windows share the same "session" in Firefox. So say you open an Incognito window to browse Facebook or something, then you open another Incognito window, this new incognito window is linked to the previous incognito window, meaning you are logged into Facebook at that new Incognito window as well. This is because, as I explained before, all the incognito windows share the same "session"
The only way to clear incognito window is to close ALL of them and then create a new incognito window. You dont have to close the main non incognito Firefox window though, just close all the incognito windows. Then open a new one, now your previous session is destroyed and you are new again.
You may know it but its not that common knowledge as it should have been
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That would be a nice thing to have
You do have it - look up container tabs
There's no "would be" about it, this is just an actual feature of Firefox
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-use-firefox-containers
edit: unless you mean specifically disposable ones for which there is an add-on
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/
Yes it really would been. The temporary is not updated for 3 years so that is quite abandoned.
Firefox some native but they feel more a solution to keeping data you want separate from each other instead of just having a way to isolate then remove.
Maybe it's because I have a programmer mentality but this is exactly the behavior I would expect, otherwise the "open link in new window"won't work reliably, all popups would fail and you couldn't "tear" off a tab in a new window
You are someone who knows how Browsers work so you think this way.
I use containers for everything. Best thing Mozilla has ever done.
I just wish the containers were by domain by default and automatic.
I think they pretty much are?
For me that behavior was expected. E.g. if I open a link from incognito in a new window, then it obviously should also use incognito but share its context with the previous sessions, otherwise it would require you to login over and over again. If an independently opened incognito window behaved different from a link-click window, I'd find it even more confusing.
I would say it should be the opposite. Separate windows should be independent but tabs on other hand can share same session.
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Nah, what if you drag a tab from one window to another.
In fact, that's a good way to understand the behavior. Log into a site. Visit the site in your other window. If they share a session, you'll be logged in. If they don't, you'll be logged out.
yeah that seems intended and obvious to me as well
This isn't well known?
Wish it was
IDK how else it could work.
Anyone who understands what a private window actually does, would expect it to work this way.
seems counter intuitive.. each incognito window should be separated into their containers.
seems like a good idea to take that container addon and apply that to incognito.
why would you expect each tab connected to the same window to each have a different cache or whatever as if it wasnt connected to the same window.
it seems counterintuitive to expect that.
unless yall mean opening up multiple windows then i ask what r u using incognito for so much. nobody cares about you or your data in any significant way thatll affect you.
No not tabs sharing data but windows sharing data is unintuitive
There's an add on that lets you create custom containers, a container acts as it's own session in a way, content, cache, cookies etc are all localised to one container
For example, you open youtube in one then open gmail in another container, neither one will know you're logged into the other
I think what you are looking for is Containers. FF uses containers to wall things off from each other, whereas Private sessions are still all sandboxed together, as you discovered. I know this is quite different from how Safari, for example, handles things, but you can accomplish the same things, just a little differently.
It's not even called incognito in FF.
... Are there people out there expecting more than a private/incognito session not saving your session data when you end it?
That is the sole reason I use private mode, because I don't want it to save cookies/cached/temp files/history locally for whatever I'm visiting.
Btw, a good addon for doing that all the time is Cookie AutoDelete. Building up the whitelist will take a while, but it's worth it in the end.
Thanks for the recommendation.
I believe it adds some features above Firefox's defaults, but for anyone reading that doesn't know, Firefox does have a feature
"Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed." under "Privacy and Security" in settings -> under the "Cookies and Site Data" sub-section.
They also have a "Manage Exceptions" button to build a whitelist and blocklist of websites to always allow cookies and site data, or always block cookies and site data.
For those looking for more extreme add-ons are a great idea, but always prefer built-ins when available/sufficient.
I'm fine with just using Private browsing in my case. My wife knows I look at porn, but I don't want it to be in her face if she ever uses my computer.
I mean, the naming is a bit misleading, to be fair. Or at least not specific enough. Many people don't actually know what or who it makes you private towards.
Which is why I appreciate browsers having a little notice about common misconceptions when opening a new private tab or window.
Why would you ever sign into anything in incognito mode. Doesn't that pretty much defeat the whole purpose?
There are legitimate reasons. You may have a main account in a given page which you usually want to log into automatically, but at certain occasions you might want to use an alt without your browser forgetting to log into your main by default. A more specific example of this would be someone who has an alt account for NSFW stuff in social media because they want to be able to browse in their main without risk of genitals popping up on their screen while they're on the bus or using the phone next to family.
I use it when I need to log into a computer at work with a personal account, so that I know I'm logged out when I close the window.
I use it to test that I've set up an authentication system correctly without a cookie bias, among other uses
Set everything up in main > confirm tests pass > log in from incognito with password vault to make sure the auto test didn't lie.
anonymity is not the only usage for incognito, and frankly it doesn’t even make you very anonymous on its own
Logging into alt accounts without logging out of main
Thankfully I have a life, so I don't feel the need.
Signing in to a service would defeat incognito mode if its function were to make you incognito towards the websites you visit.
But since that's not what it does, I don't see why it would defeat anything.
My health and dental insurance are through the same company but on different accounts (they refuse to combine them), so I use a private tab to sign into both at the same time because it normally only allows one at a time.
I had that issue with two services two, but I've taken to using different containers now.
This is what Firefox containers are for
Don't use incognito mode for this
Exactly because I want to log out of everything when I close my browser
You want to log into Facebook and as soon as you close it, it should be forgotten
It’s the same with Chrome isn’t it?
Yes
I dont know if it is the same in Chrome or not, it could be
I can confirm that this is the case with Microsoft Edge (I know, I know, it's required for work), which is Chromium-based, so I would be very surprised if Chrome differs significantly in this.
For the record, I don’t think safari works this way. Every incognito window has its own session I believe
That's not that worrying to me.
Use profiles instead of incognito when possible. You can have profiles, with different privacy settings, for anything.
As a "I just care somewhat about privacy because the NSA sees everything anyway" guy... How the fuck are you all using your browsers and for what? HOW can this lack of knowledge cost anyone anything?
One example of being more careful about privacy that came up for me recently is that I have gmail as my primary mail and I use google docs for storing a lot of things I use for work. If I also want to block youtube ads and they say it's against their TOS, they can theoretically close my gmail and docs for violating it.
They might not and I haven't necessarily seen anything saying they're moving in that direction, but since last month I've been exclusively watching yt either through proxy sites and apps or opening it in incog windows where I'm logged out.
Privacy used to be just for people who have something to hide but thats 2012. These days you will have more problems that pop out of nowhere if you dont care about privacy and most of them arent even related to your data being stolen or something.
As a functional human being you need to have balance in everything. You need privacy but you also need to eat. And your need to eat is greater than your need to privacy.
A strange thing though, have you not tried uBlock Origin? I have been using uBlock Origin and I dont think I ever saw any ads issues on Youtube.
Either way, log out of Google services when you dont need it. Only use Incognito browsing mode because it gets cleared automatically.
go on pornhub
dont close the window, just hide it afterwards
join a meeting, share the screen and type in „po” because you need to go to a website starting with po
pornhub shows up
get fired because youre jerking of with company property
Coming from experience are we?
I've started to realize that temporary tab containers do almost everything that I used to use incognito mode for, and more.
This is so counterintuitive and so important. Thank you.
For reference, private mode in Safari protects you from this.
"protects" you from this? Honestly, this is exactly how I'd expect incognito mode to work.
Does it protect you from Apple too?
just use profiles
firefox profiles have a bad UX in my experience. The Multi-Account Containers addon works better. There's also Facebook Container, which uses the multi-account containers addon.
Yeah, I also found out when I was manually testing our product's logged-out UX at work and the 2nd trial started logged in.
Thanks, I didn't know that!
Hail spez
Does incognito mode do anything that temporary containers don't? In a world of 2FA key password managers, having to log in every session is super easy—barely an inconvenience.
I'm kind of a dumb guy about computers, but destroying everything every time seemed like a smart call.
The only way to clear incognito window is to close ALL of them and then create a new incognito window. You dont have to close the main non incognito Firefox window though, just close all the incognito windows. Then open a new one, now your previous session is destroyed and you are new again.
This is not quite correct, either. Rather, all incognito tabs in the same window share their state. This is actually really helpful, though granted it could be announced more readily. Each incognito window OTOH is separate from any other one.
So say you need 5 sessions that are fully separate to test logins -> 5 incognito windows. In each you can open tabs as you're testing though and they can see the login of each window.
This is incorrect, I've just tested it myself. You have one private Icognito session in Firefox at a time, and all new windows are in that session. The Icognito session resets once all the private windows are closed.
I logged in to Kbin in one private window, then opened a new private window from my main firefox window and when i navigated to Kbin I was logged in. I closed all the private windows and then opened a new private window and I was no longer logged in.
This is the same in Chrome, I did the same test and had the same results.
Tl;dr: Incognito windows and tabs are not separate sessions. You must close all Icognito sessions to get a new cleared session.
You certainly havent tested it
If you want security use Tor
Tor is for like the EXTREME end of security that may not be required for casual users but Tor has its place in my computer
This might be a better suggestion then: https://mullvad.net/en/browser
Useful even without a VPN.