@jwz This would not be so much of an issue if Chrome and others simply ditched the labels “incognito” and “private browsing”. It should only be thought as just a temporary instance of a browser at best.
Maybe some label that implies you are doing transient browsing in a temporary sandbox, but still explain that your data isn’t actually extra private or safe.
@cary @jwz I remember when Incognito was picked as a name.
It made perfect sense at the time: short, simple to say and understand, and directly applied to the threat model most people at the time imagined: data leakage on a shared terminal at a library, Internet café, or in the home.
The term's expected meaning drifted as people began to think of the threat model being MITM observation and server-side; when Chrome came out, the story was client-side.
