Google Activates New Flag On Chrome So Users Can Lock Incognito Tabs With Biometric Authentication

The concept of incognito tabs has really altered the way many of us browse in today’s world. It may not disguise your browsing activity from internet providers and pesky third parties on a mission to track you down, but it does have its benefits. This includes hiding all of your history as well as cookies used to locate you on a regular browsing mission.

But with time, we’re getting more news about how Google is bound to change things further. And by that, we mean the thought of locking your incognito tabs with biometric authentication. How cool does that sound?

The tech giant is in the works of testing a new flag on Chrome that manages to do just that. So now, it’s going to be possible to hide from those handling your tablets and your mobile phones.

As per our findings the feature is yet to be launched on a big scale. But, it’s coming slowly and steadily for Android users. If you’re a little impatient and wish to avail it immediately, feel free to activate it by downloading the Chrome Canary version and enabling the new flag feature by searching "Enable device authentication for incognito" in Chrome experimental flags section here chrome://flags or you can simply copy paste this: chrome://flags/#incognito-reauthentication-for-android in the Chrome Canary browser to enable the incognito lock.

After restarting that browser, you will see an option for locking the incognito tabs after exiting Chrome in the settings > security and privacy. Tap it and activate it, but you will need to work a bit more to unlock the feature when you wish to gain access to them again, right after you leave the Chrome browser.

Thankfully, the company says you’ll still be given a chance to immediately shut the Incognito buttons via a similar notification alert without unlocking.

In case you did not know, the concept of unlocking via Fingerprints is definitely not new. It’s been in the works for a while now. The first time we saw it take center stage on the search engine giant was last year. During that time, we saw the flag pop up on Chrome 94. And yes, it didn’t work well or at all during that period.

We must add that it’s awfully bizarre that it took the company this long to actually find a solution for Android devices because it was fine on the iOS variant of the browser. They’ve had it for a while now.

So how does this whole biometric authentication work? Well, you get the chance to choose between allowing Face identification alongside the classic fingerprint option. And across Apple, Google is even allowing the feature to extend to Drive, Authenticator, and its Search as well.

So now that the Incognito tab feature comes with better security protection in the form of locking and there’s already a whole flag being identified by Google, it’s not going take the tech giant too much time for the launch to all users having Chrome for Android.

Also, note that this is not the sole feature up for grabs on Chrome 105 or the program’s other variants, as there might be more in store that’s not being revealed.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World