What stays on your device
| What | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| Browsing history | Never written. There is no history feature to clear. |
| Cookies, cache, local storage | Deleted when you close the app, and again when you open it |
| Favorites | Only the sites you add yourself. Kept on your device until you remove them, and visible to anyone who opens the app. |
| Your settings | Kept on your device, so the app looks the way you left it |
| Downloaded files | Kept in your Downloads folder. They are your files. |
| Backups | The app is left out of Android backups, so none of this is copied to your Google account or to a new phone. |
None of this leaves your device. There is nothing for you to request a copy of and nothing for us to delete, because we never had it.
What goes over the internet
Only the websites you visit. Your browser talks to those sites directly, exactly as any browser does. We are not in the middle of that and cannot see it.
Search terms go to the search engine you picked in Settings. What that company does with them is covered by their privacy policy, not this one.
Permissions, and when they are asked for
The app never uses any of these on its own. Each is requested at the moment a website asks for it, and only after you agree. Say no and the website is told no.
| Permission | Asked for when |
|---|---|
| Camera | A site asks for it, for example a video call or a QR scanner |
| Microphone | A site asks for it |
| Location | A site asks where you are, for example a map |
| Notifications | Never requested. Declared only so you can switch the media playback controls on yourself, from Android settings. |
| Internet | Loading web pages |
| See installed apps | Opening links in the app they belong to, such as a banking or identity app. Without it Android hides those apps and every such link fails. |
| Foreground service | Keeping audio playing when you switch away, for example a radio stream |
What this does not do
Everything above is about your own device. Off it, this browser changes nothing, and it is worth being plain about that rather than letting the name suggest otherwise.
| Who | Can still see |
|---|---|
| The websites you visit | Your IP address and everything you do on them, exactly as with any browser. If you sign in somewhere, they know who you are. |
| Your internet provider | Which sites you connect to. Blocking a tracker does not hide the connection itself. |
| The network you are on | An employer, a school or a shared Wi-Fi can log which sites were reached through it. |
| Someone with access to your device | Anything they install on it. No browser can protect you from software running underneath it. |
This is not a VPN and not Tor. It does not hide your location, mask your address, or make you anonymous. What it does is keep your own device from keeping a record: no history to find, no cookies left behind, nothing in the cache, and an empty card in the app switcher.
If you need to be hidden from the network rather than from the device, you need a different kind of tool, and this one alongside it.
Third parties
The app contains no advertising, no analytics, no tracking libraries and no crash reporting. It ships with a list of known advertising and tracking domains, used to block requests to them. That list sits inside the app and is never fetched or updated over the network.
Google Play counts installations, as it does for every app in its store. That is Google's collection and is covered by Google's privacy policy, not this one.
Children
This app is not directed at children, and collects no data from anyone, children included.
Changes to this policy
If it ever changes, the date at the top changes with it. Since the app collects nothing, no change here can reach back and affect data that was never gathered in the first place.
Contact
Coder Shiyar
incognito.browser.app@gmail.com