Incognito mode (private browsing) is a browser window that forgets your history, cookies and form data when you close it; it does not hide your IP address or activity from websites or your network.
Explanation
Incognito is Chrome's name for private browsing; Firefox calls it a Private Window, Safari Private Browsing and Edge InPrivate. All of them do the same core job: when you close the private window, the browser throws away that session's history, cookies, site data and form entries. Downloads and bookmarks you made are kept. That is useful on a shared or borrowed computer. Browsers add different extras on top. Firefox isolates cookies per site with Total Cookie Protection, and Safari can lock private windows behind Face ID or Touch ID. What private browsing does not do is change anything on the network. Sites still see your IP address and rough location, sites you sign in to know it is you, and your ISP, school or employer network can still see which sites you reach. Google's own help page says this, and a 2024 settlement of a US class action required it to make that disclosure clearer. To change what websites and the network see, you need a proxy, a VPN or Tor. They solve a different problem; combining one with a private window keeps the session off the device as well.
In practice
Incognito stops Chrome saving your history, cookies and form data on your device after you close the window — nothing more. Your network, employer and the sites you visit can still see your activity. The gap became a lawsuit: in a US class action filed in 2020, users argued Google still collected data in Incognito, and in 2024 Google agreed to delete billions of records and update its disclosures to settle the case.
Sources: ABC News - Google Incognito settlement (2024) · Google Chrome Help - How private browsing works in Chrome · Mozilla - Total Cookie Protection on by default (2022)
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