Differences between incognito and guest modes and when you should use each in your browser

Incognito and guest in Brave

There are browsers who take more care of our privacy than others. Nothing is 100% certain, but we can take some measures. Among them, something that is usually done is navigate incognito mode, although many think that they are fully protected and, in terms of protection and as DuckDuckGo says, it is the same as hiding behind a streetlight. So what is it for? And what differences does it have with guest mode?

There is some difference and it is subtle. The users of Firefox have no choice, or not in a simple way. As we will explain later, it has to do with profiles, and in the Mozilla browser you have to create a new one manually if you want to use something similar to a guest session that is in Chromium-based browsers. Both modes are a type of private browsing, but not exactly the same.

What is incognito mode

Incognito mode is, as its name suggests, trying to hide ourselves so that something doesn't see us. That is, when I open an incognito window what I want is for everything that happens in that session stays in that session. Searches, cookies, cache and everything else will not be saved, and we will not see the invitation to save passwords if we log in to a service. When we mentioned that we were the ones who wanted to hide, we meant that the profile is ours, and from incognito mode we can access our history and passwords, for example. Closing the window will delete everything.

What is guest mode

Guest mode or session is an option in browsers like Chromium that starts a private window, but the user can be anyone. Therefore, that session is, in some ways, like a Live Session of a Linux-based operating system: we will not have / the guest You will not have access to anything from any existing profile. In some browsers the use of buttons is even limited, everything designed to make it a 100% throwaway session.

Everything that happens in that session stays in that session, nothing will be saved and passwords cannot be saved either.

When to use each

I think that with the previous explanations, things are quite clear, but we can try to shed some more light with some examples.

Private browsing has always been used for web design/development. The reason is cookies and cache in general, which is likely that we will not see the changes we make as we expect because what the browser has saved prevents it. What you do in this case is enter a clean environment, and allows you to see things as any new visitor to a website will see them. We can also use it so that something is not stored on our device in any way, and there can be many and varied reasons.

The guest mode or session is what to use when we want to let someone use our browser without them having access to anything of ours. If incognito mode was chosen, our guest would be protected, since everything will be destroyed when closing the window, but we would not be protected from him. He would be able to go to Facebook, Twitter or Gmail and identify himself. What's worse, if you knew of a system that allows you to see what's under the balls that hide the passwords, you could even keep them for yourself.

Therefore, what you have to do is create a guest session/profile where nothing is saved and you do not have access to anything from another profile.

What incognito and guest modes are not used for

I hope there aren't any, but if any of our readers are thinking about doing illegal and dangerous things, neither way is going to protect them from law enforcement. The navigation will be recorded by our operator, and if it were necessary and the law required it, they would discover it. Searches in general are also saved by search engines. There would be other ways to protect yourself, but they no longer have anything to do with the nature of this article.

I hope the main difference between incognito and guest modes is clear. And also that anyone who is thinking about doing illegal things continues to trust them...


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