How to browse privately in Chrome

To protect yourself from tracking and regain some control over your privacy, you browse in incognito mode in Chrome with a few configuration steps.

Private browsing stops Chrome from remembering the websites and pages that you visit and your download history. This doesn’t stop websites or your employer from tracking which pages you visit – you are not anonymous when using the private browsing mode.

Incognito mode does not disable tracking cookies or helpful cookies storing login or form information.

You can see if you are in incognito mode by looking for the little gray incognito icon at the top of your browser window.

Note: You will need to start a new incognito browser window each time you use Chrome.

Open a new incognito window in Chrome

• Click More ⋮ in the toolbar, then click New Incognito Window.

You can also open any link within a page that you are viewing in a private window

• Right click on the link, then click Open Link in Incognito Window.

Turn cookies off in Chrome

You can disable cookies in Chrome by changing a setting in the preferences.

1. Click More ⋮ in the toolbar, then click Settings.
2. Near the bottom of the page, click Advanced.
3. Under “Privacy and security,” select Content settings.
4. Select Cookies.
5. Turn Allow sites to save and read cookie data off.

You can Block third-party cookies by enabling this setting – these are the type of cookies typically used for tracking.

Alternatively, you can turn on the setting for Send a Do Not Track request with your browsing traffic in the Advanced Settings, although many websites do not honour these requests.

Read more about incognito mode in Chrome here.

Incognito browsing isn’t really private browsing though!