When we browse the Internet normally, our data ends up in all the sites: the DNS, our ISP, the websites we visit, the websites that track us, Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. Browsing privately is very difficult, and trying to do so would spoil our browsing experience. Therefore, web browsers, such as Edge , offer us a private browsing mode. However, is it really safe and private to navigate with it?
The private mode of browsers, as is the case with Edge’s InPrivate , does not mean that we will be able to browse with total privacy, contrary to what people tend to believe. The purpose of these navigation modes is different.
The objective of the private mode of the browser is to allow us to visit any website without saving temporary data or cookies or history. In this way, when closing the private window, all this information will be erased from the PC automatically. So there will be no trace of what we have done on our computer, but from the outside they will have monitored it as if we had done it from a normal window.
Edge Private Mode Dangers
Inprivate mode is not 100% secure
Privacy is not the same as security . And Edge’s InPrivate mode doesn’t add extra to any of these concepts. This mode allows us to do the same thing that we can do in any normal browser session, so if we download malware, or visit websites designed to steal our data, the same thing will happen. It does not have additional security measures or other shields to protect us from certain problems.
Moreover, as these modes usually load without extensions, if we have an extension that gives us greater security, when we open the private mode we will be browsing without it.
We only get local privacy, not remote
When we open this mode in any browser, a new ID is generated, so we are entering the Internet as an ” anonymous ” person. Everything we do in the browser will be saved privately on our PC and, when we close it, cookies, history and all data will be deleted without leaving a trace. No one will be able to know that we have used the private mode or what we have done with it.
However, at no time do you prevent our ISP or our DNS provider from controlling everything we do. This information will be associated with the new ID that has been generated, but they could associate the new ID with our person through other data, such as MAC or IP.
We can lose something important
In theory, everything sounds good, a mode that allows us to navigate where we want without leaving a trace . But if we use this mode too often we can get used to it, start browsing, get to a page that we were interested in saving but that, when we close the browser, has been lost. And there is no way to go back to it either because of the history or in any other way.
The same can happen, for example, if we register on a web page. In normal mode, when we generate a strong password to register on a page, it is automatically saved in the password keychain so that we do not lose it. However, it may be that when we are in this mode we forget to write down the password, and when we close, we will lose all the data.
When to use Edge’s InPrivate Mode?
So what is the optimal use of this private browsing mode? Basically when we do not want to leave a trace on the computer of what we do. If we are going to visit websites that we do not want to be registered, or if we need to log in to a social network with another account and we do not want to log out of our main account.
Edge’s private mode, or InPrivate, can be seen, roughly, as a second alternative browser, but we should not see it as a 100% private exit door.