'Secret agents' warning removed from Chrome incognito tab

[georgemcbay]

Terrible change, IMO.

Even if the older expanded list skewed a bit into jokey territory in the wording (which I think is fine, even for -- maybe especially for, the secret agent bit because jokes are a fantastic way to highlight injustices) it gave Joe Random user a much better idea of what things incognito won't protect him from than the new text does.

The dividing line of protection incognito gives you may seem completely obvious to anyone reading HackerNews, but I assure you that it is non-obvious to my non-tech friends and family who tell me their new computer has "2 terabytes of memory".

[line-zero]

I once had a conversation with someone about how Incognito Mode doesn't actually provide anonymity, and he said, "No, it's cool dude. I have my DSN [sic] set to 8.8.8.8 -- that makes you totally invisible online. It just makes it look like you're Google. Don't worry."

[jcutrell]

This seems to happen a lot after a certain half life - all of the little quirky personality-showing additions get stripped over time in projects like this. Even happens in code comments too.

Things slip through the cracks and go to production, and then everyone complains and then things with too much color get pulled.

[jeffcox]

Software grows up too, for better or worse. I find this less surprising than nmap losing "...requires root privileges which you do not appear to possess. Sorry, dude."

[tptacek]

People had apparently been complaining for awhile (search for the bug thread on this); for instance: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.chromium.bugs/1815...

[anigbrowl]

People will complain about anything. I, for example, am going to complain about this slight decline in my browser humor.

[catshirt]

on unreasonable grounds...

>> Government surveillance is nothing to joke about

i didn't consider it a joke, and i'll let the next one speak for itself:

>> it isn't performed by secret agents, but via lawyers and engineers

[deathhand]

It was a disruption tactic: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...

[csoghoian]

As one of the complainers (and the person who filed the bug you linked to), I'm happy to see Google make some progress here. I'm even happier to see that they hired Adrienne Felt, who is excellent, and are letting her improve the usability of Chrome's warnings.

[npdoty]

Interesting that this change from early December is being discussed now. A more recent commit (from @__apf__) in mid-December changes the text to, as the author puts it, "increase emphasis on what incognito doesn't provide".

https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=revision&revisio...

[eli]

Maybe the joke just isn't funny any more.

[hayksaakian]

Maybe it's not a joke?

[cachichas]

Great The Smiths song!

[xacaxulu]

Probably because government surveillance is completely expected now.

[dbloom]

"Cookies are delicious delicacies"

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213186

[Houshalter]

So this is why Never-Ending Language Learner thought that computer files were baked goods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never-Ending_Language_Learning...

[gbog]

I for one welcome this change, on stylistic grounds. Browsers are used by many people around the world from all ages, all of what they tell to their users must be carefully edited to avoid misunderstandings and anything not necessary needs to be removed. A joke or half joke like that was prone to misunderstandings and unnecessary.

[zenocon]

I bet the folks over at https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!forum/chrom... must get a good chuckle out the hysteria swarming over this

[cordite]

If only this was a canary clause.

[ChrisAntaki]

Out of sight, out of mind

[dsugarman]

it also won't protect you from bullying from people named incognito

[higherpurpose]

Here, have some Streisand effect, Google!