It's quite disappointing to finally figure out that even the incognito mode doesn't offer you that desired privacy, at least not when the likes of Facebook and Google can track your porn viewing history.
You're probably wondering how that is even possible, and amidst your thought, you might also like to imagine how long your porn viewing browsing history would actually be.
When you switch from a regular browser to incognito mode, you're expected to not be seen, not even by the search engine trackers.
However, this isn't exactly the case for porn viewing, as the user policy doesn't stop either Facebook or Google from monitoring your activities, even while browsing on the incognito mode.
A recent study by researchers from Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Pennsylvania, Google, Facebook, and other major tech companies are secretly tracking the porn you watch even if you switch to the "incognito" mode on your smartphone or laptop.
In fact, 93 percent of pornographic web pages leaked data to third parties.
Out of 22,484 adult sites analyzed in the study, 10% had Facebook trackers, 24% had Oracle trackers, and 74% contained Google trackers.
According to this study, published in a forthcoming New Media & Society paper obtained by The New York Times, an alarming 17 percent of pornographic websites were found to be encrypted, leaving users at risk of being hacked.
The researchers wrote;
"In the US, many advertising and video hosting platforms forbid 'adult' content. For example, Google's YouTube is the largest video host in the world, but does not allow pornography."
"However, Google has no policies forbidding websites from using their code hosting (Google APIs) or audience measurement tools (Google Analytics). Thus, Google refuses to host porn but has no limits on observing the porn consumption of users, often without their knowledge."
Trackers are placed on sites for various reasons. For instance, Google Analytics feeds traffic information back to the site websites so they can monitor their traffic.
Alternatively, Facebook gives these websites the ability to embed its "Like" feature, allowing sharing back to Facebook.
And in return, Facebook and Google receive data about the sites' visitors. What exactly happens to the data? And which data is specifically collected? It's hard to know.
A Google spokesman told Business Insider:
"We don't allow Google Ads on websites with adult content, and we prohibit personalized advertising and advertising profiles based on a user's sexual interests or related activities online."
While Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne told The New York Times:
"We don't want adult websites using our business tools since that type of content is a violation of our Community Standards. When we learn that these types of sites or apps use our tools, we enforce against them."
Elena Maris, a Microsoft researcher who worked on the study, said:
"[The] the fact that the mechanism for adult site tracking is so similar to online retail [and] should be a huge red flag. This isn't picking out a sweater and seeing it follow you across the web. This is so much more specific and deeply personal."
