[whatwg] Private browsing vs. Storage and Databases

[Scott Hess]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 6:30 PM, Brady Eidson <beidson at apple.com> wrote:
> On Apr 7, 2009, at 6:19 PM, Ian Fette (イアンフェッティ) wrote:
>> I think that doing option 3, and perhaps providing a way for the app to
>> know that we're in this mode so it can do whatever is appropriate (saving to
>> the cloud more frequently, just not using localstorage all together,
>> whatever is right for that app) solves those problems.
>
> I agree it is valuable for a page to know this mode is in effect, and it
> would be important for plug-ins as well which is why it's being discussed on
> some plug-ins lists.

Everyone is free to implement their privacy mode as they see fit, but
if apps can trivially tell they are in incognito mode, as opposed to
running on a constrained environment (low quota, etc), then I think
that sort of defeats the purpose.  I don't want apps refusing to
operate because they detect incognito mode, incognito is about _me_
not trusting _them_, not them deciding that I can't be trusted because
I'm acting shifty.

When in incognito mode, well-behaved apps should already prompt you
before throwing huge amounts of data at you, just like they would if
you visited from a fresh browser install, so I think that's mostly a
non-issue.

-scott