Logging The Cyber World

Apple calls it “Private Browsing.” Microsoft calls it “InPrivate.” Google’s new Chrome browser calls it “Incognito.” And yes, practically everyone else calls it “Porn Mode.”

Chrome’s launch on Tuesday confirmed a new feature as a must-have in Web-browsing software: a cloak of invisibility that hides the user’s path around the Web. Incognito browsing, like a similar setting in a new version of Internet Explorer released last week, is designed to erase any trace of the sites you’ve recently visited, wiping away cached pages and browsing history from your hard drive and turning off the browser’s autocomplete function, which can reveal what you’ve recently typed into text boxes.

That private mode can be used for hiding indiscretions in the Web’s red-light district, or, as Google innocently suggests, for planning “surprises like gifts or birthdays.”

Read the complete article at Forbes.com (Technology)