Google acknowledged that Incognito mode in Chrome is nearly useless.

It will protect against curious family members, but not against advertising tracking or Google itself.

At the end of 2023, Google agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit requiring it to pay $5 billion to Chrome users. This lawsuit was filed back in 2020 when users and advocates realized that Google had misled users into believing that the incognito mode in Chrome was secure.

In short: the feature description was crafted in such a way that users might mistakenly think that the browser would not track their online activity. In reality, browsing history and other data continued to be sent to Google servers and could be used by third-party sites with Google Analytics and Google Ad Manager tools.

To avoid other similar lawsuits, Google is changing the description of incognito mode - this was noted by Chrome Canary users for developers. Now the warning looks like this:

The second sentence is an addition that Google uses to protect itself. The new description clarifies how the mode works: you can visit an 18+ site without your household finding out. But Google and advertisers will still know.

It is likely that the description of incognito mode in the stable version of the browser will change with the next Chrome update.