Do you share your computer with a roomie? Do you loan you laptop to friends? Without going into too much detail about your personal life, let’s just say that you might not want everyone to see every site that you’ve ever visited.

You wouldn’t want an acquaintance to start typing in the URL bar and have it pre-populate with “friskybunniesdoingnaughtythings.com” or such. Nor would you want your boss to see Monster.com in your browser history! It’s none of their bees’ wax where you’ve been, you won’t tell them and they can’t make you! Problem is, your browser is likely to narc you out.

But have no fear, Chrome is here! The new browser just hatched at the Googleplex comes with an intriguing new feature: Go incognito! The browser winks at you encouragingly. Go undercover! Pull that blanket over you and let them even try to find you. Funny, come to think of it - the guys that built an empire around your ability to go seek now gives you the ability to hide.

Once you submerge in the twilight world of Chrome’s new feature, you’ll be met by the following welcome:

You’ve gone incognito. Pages you view in this window won’t appear in your browser history or search history, and they won’t leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however.

Ah, the tingle of getting away with something. Where shall we go! What objectionable, NSFW website will our giddy little fingers enter in that URL bar? Oh the possibilities. You know where I went? No you don’t and you won’t either.

Google’s caveat:

Going incognito doesn’t affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:

• Websites that collect or share information about you
• Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit
• Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
• Surveillance by secret agents
• People standing behind you

Be wary, my friend. It’s a dangerous world out there, so don’t go running with scissors. Just today I was reading Ryan Narayne’s article about phishing bandits and the dangers of pissing them off.

Hey, maybe that’s something I could do with Incognito! Piss off some phishing crims. But then again, let’s not and say we did (see what Joe Stewart of SecureWorks says on the topic.)

But Chrome’s Incognito sure gives me an added sense of security, and what I love the most about it is that I happened onto it casually, by accident. Typical minimalists, those Google folk. Promise less, deliver more.

Here’s some more from the Google site:

For times when you want to browse in stealth mode, for example, to plan surprises like gifts or birthdays, Google Chrome offers the incognito browsing mode. Webpages that you open and files downloaded while you are incognito won’t be logged in your browsing and download histories; all new cookies are deleted after you close the incognito window. You can browse normally and in incognito mode at the same time by using separate windows.

Browsing in incognito mode only keeps Google Chrome from storing information about the websites you’ve visited. The websites you visit may still have records of your visit. Any files saved to your computer will still remain on your computer.

Example: If you sign into your Google Account on http://www.google.com while in incognito mode, your subsequent web searches are recorded in your Google Web History. In this case, if you want to make sure your searches are not stored in your Google Account, you’ll need to pause your Google Web History tracking.

Color me happy. I love finding hidden features, especially when, delightful irony, they are made by a company based on finding things.

* Cute squirrel by Ljkljgk, fish image by Modomatic, both at Flickr.

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