Private / Incognito Mode
Also known as: private browsing, incognito, inprivate
A browsing session that doesn't save history, cookies or form data locally when you close it.
Private browsing keeps a session's cookies, cache and history off your device — useful for shared computers, logged-out testing and keeping unrelated accounts apart. It does not hide you from websites, your ISP, your employer or the network you're on.
Some browsers (Brave, Firefox, Safari) add extra protections in private mode, such as stronger tracker blocking or DNS over HTTPS by default. Even so, it's a local-privacy feature, not an anonymity tool.
Related terms
A browser feature that isolates cookies and storage between tabs so different identities don't mix.
Keeping cookies, cache and storage separated per top-level site so trackers can't correlate across the web.
A service that encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a server in another location.