Are "incognito" (Chrome) and "In Private" (Internet Explorer) surfing safer?

No. All they do is prevent your browser from saving your history. The websites you visit get all of the same information they would normally. If you want your online activity to be private from more than just those who share your computer, you’ll need some kind of anti-tracking extension like Ghostery or uBlock Origin.

Not really. It just means it won’t keep a record of sites you visit in the history. Its worth remembering that the sites you visit will be stored in the DNS cache so it is still possible to track what you’ve looked at. It’s also possible that the cache will be copied to the HDD as virtual memory.

There is a new browser launching this month (July) called TraceFree. It costs $5. month. They say nothing can break into it. Not even Google. I read about it on a tech site. I would look into this first! Check it out on Kickstarter.

@si3tech Thank you for that.
Aww, too bad. I was hoping Incognito would at least provide some protection against malware.

If that is what you want protection from just use uBlock Origin in Firefox or Chrome.

And for the love of god. If a site ever tells you that you need to install something to watch a video on the internet hit the back button as soon as you can.

Every single time my moms computer has gotten screwed in the last five years I could trace it back to something she installed that a site said was needed to watch a video. No video is worth needing to re-install.

@johnpowell Yes, thank you. Good to know that about downloads.

IMHO privacy does not exist as we used to know it. When people buy and use these “life-monitoring” gadgets then FORGET privacy.

No. They only prohibit the browser from having a history.