[danielhfrank]

Could anyone comment on how much of this stuff could be sidestepped by just using an incognito window in Chrome? I don't mind ads targeted to, say, me as a Java developer. But, if I'm going to look up anything I'd rather others not know about, I simply pop open an incognito window and... am I good to go? Is there anything besides my IP address that can be read when I'm doing that?

[potatolicious]

Incognito is a pretty thin layer of privacy. What many systems will see is this:

"User foobaz123 logs in from IP u.v.w.x. Here we have a no-cookie session from IP u.v.w.x. This is probably foobaz123"

Any identity management system of modest complexity can do this with fairly good accuracy. So while they don't have you confirmed via an authentication cookie, it's certainly a far cry from total anonymity.

[Mithrandir]

Incognito mode only blocks local storage of data. It doesn't block IP address, downloads, referrers, or user agents. There's also some concern on if it actually works at all. (See http://ask-leo.com/do_new_browser_features_offering_privacy_... )

[brudgers]

Chrome sends keystrokes typed into the address/search bar directly to Google.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/microsoft-goog...