Google changes the Chrome API to prevent incognito mode detection

When browsing the web with Chrome, some websites use a method to determine if the visitor is in incognito mode, which is a privacy leak. Google is currently considering modifying the relevant APIs for Chrome to prevent this behavior. Chrome supports the FileSystem API, which allows you to create virtual file systems in the browser sandbox. Cache the relevant resources of the website to the system, so you don’t have to download these files every time you load.

But in the Chrome Gerrit article that was updated earlier this week, Google said they are modifying the FileSystem API to be available in an incognito mode without privacy risks.

According to the latest design documentation, if a user browses a webpage in non-incognito mode, Chrome will continue to use the virtual file system that is incapable of storage, but when using incognito mode, Chrome will store the content in memory. When the incognito mode session is closed, the associated file system will be clear and will not leave any traces on the hard disk.

The problem with using this mode is that some malicious websites may abuse all memory and cause the browser to crash. Google will explain the size of the memory in the later period.

This improvement is currently available in Chrome Canary 74. This feature will be released as soon as possible in Chrome Canary, which you can open via “enable-filesystem-in-incognito” in chrome://flags.