CYBERSPACE—A favorite method used to surf porn sites online will get an upgrade from Google next month, when the internet behemoth makes a change to its popular Chrome browser that will prevent sites from detecting when a user has activated “incognito” mode for additional privacy. Google made the announcement in a blog post on Thursday, saying, “We want you to be able to access the web privately, with the assurance that your choice to do so is private as well.”
The announcement came a day after reports that, according to an exhaustive new study, Google has placed tracking code on nearly three of every four porn sites—74 percent—allowing the company to gather data on users’ porn preferences and viewing practices, as well as to track them as they click over to other sites across the World Wide Web as well. AVN.com reported on the alarming study July 18.
Google on Thursday attempted to deny the study’s findings, as quoted by The Daily Mail newspaper.
“We don’t allow Google Ads on websites with adult content and we prohibit personalized advertising and advertising profiles based on a user’s sexual interests or related activities online,” the company said. “Additionally, tags for our ad services are never allowed to transmit personally identifiable information.”
The study, however, did not allege that Google had placed actual advertisements from its GoogleAds network on porn sites, and in its elliptical statement, Google did not specifically deny that its tracking code is embedded on thousands of adult sites.
But Google also took the opportunity to offer the new “incognito” enhancement, as a symbol of the company’s self-declared commitment to online privacy. While Google has said that its incognito mode—which prevents the names and URLs or visited sites from being stored in a user’s web browser—was not designed for porn surfers, the company stated on Thursday that “in situations such as political oppression or domestic abuse, people may have important safety reasons for concealing their web activity and their use of private browsing features.”
Publishers who keep their content behind paywalls are likely to take a hit from the Google Chrome change. Incognito mode can often be used to circumvent those paywalls. Publishers, however, were able to fight off those users by detecting when they were using incognito mode and blocking them on that basis, according to a Gizmodo report.
With the update coming in Google Chrome version 76, publishers and other sites will no longer be able to tell whether a user is surfing incognito or not.
The update, however, will still fall short of the “super privacy” update said to be in the works for the Mozilla Firefox browser. As AVN.com reported earlier this year, Mozilla is reportedly planning to integrate the Tor network into Firefox.
Tor completely shields a user’s IP address and identity from other sites or any prying eyes on the internet, allowing users to visit any sites they choose with no restrictions. The Firefox update is expected to prove especially useful in getting around the blocks on porn sites that exist in countries such as India and China.
Photo By osde8info / Wikimedia Commons
