incognito

Porn mode - no longer a dirty little secret | Digihub Blog | digihub.smh.com.au

People like porn, but some web browsers have been slow to acknowledge this naked 800 pound gorilla sitting in the corner.

Whenever you surf the web, you leave behind all kinds of clues on your computer as to what you've been doing, such as cookies, images in the cache and addresses in the browser history. Anyone who knows even the slightest bit about computers can easily tell what you've been up to unless you cover your tracks. Thus the popularity of "porn mode" in web browsers.

Of course they don't call it porn mode, it's more likely to be labelled "private browsing mode" or "stealth mode". There are lots of legitimate reasons why you might want to engage such a mode, but surely the number one reason for most people is so they can look at porn without leaving behind incriminating evidence that their loved ones might stumble across.

There are porn mode plugins for some browsers, but it seems Safari on Mac OS was the first to get a built-in porn mode back in April 2005. Google's Chrome browser launched with "Incognito mode" in 2008. Surprisingly the two browsers with the biggest market share have been very slow off the mark. Mozilla Firefox still doesn't have a built-in porn mode, although it's expected to be included in the upcoming 3.1 update. Likewise Internet Explorer doesn't let you peruse unsavory sites with impunity, but an "InPrivate mode" is coming in IE8.

The usual suspects will naturally come out of the woodwork to declare porn mode yet another sign of the coming apocalypse, but if you don't give the people what they want they'll go elsewhere. I doubt IE and Firefox consider Safari much of a threat, but once Google Chrome launched on Windows with porn mode last year, the pressure was on IE and Firefox to follow suit. I'd say it's the kind of feature that would encourage people to switch browsers, or at least to install a second browser for their clandestine browsing sessions. If people install Chrome just for looking at porn, they might decide they like it better than IE or Firefox and make the switch completely.

If you've got a dirty little secret, and you'd like to keep it that way, porn mode is coming to a browser near you.