Whether you’re doing some secret gift shopping for a loved one or researching a medical concern and simply don’t want anyone else to know, Chrome incognito provides you with that extra layer of secrecy. While I will always advocate for setting a biometric, PIN, or password lock on your phone, I can understand why some folks would prefer quicker access to their content without the added step.
These two make users vulnerable though when combined, and anyone using incognito mode without a phone security setup may put themselves at risk for privacy breaches. In a new Keyword blog post today, however, Google shared an update that makes it possible to use a biometric lock on Chrome itself when you’re browsing incognito!
Essentially, by navigating to the settings section, and then to the Privacy & Security area and enabling the “Lock incognito tabs when you close Chrome” option, you can rest assured that the app will handle this process on your behalf. At that point though, setting up biometric access on the browser means you’re likely to add it to your device as a whole. Either way, this seems like it will prove useful. Of course, by touching your phone’s fingerprint sensor, you’ll continue where you left off once you’re ready.
Google states that this is currently available to all Chrome users on iOS and is now rolling out to Android users. This and other updates come as a part of the company’s Data Privacy Day celebration where it hopes to better educate users on the importance of data privacy and provide tools and resources to strengthen not only devices worldwide, but also what is considered the weakest link in the privacy hierarchy – us fallible humans.
By learning about how privacy can be penetrated, most security issues disappear and it does more for our overall protection than any single software update ever could. If you’re interested in checking out Google’s Privacy Guide, you can get step-by-step instructions on how to use core Chrome privacy and security controls like history sync and Enhanced Safe Browsing.
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