Culvert VPNVPN vs incognito mode: two different problems
Incognito stops the browser keeping history and cookies on your phone; a VPN hides traffic from the network and your IP from sites. Different problems.
Incognito mode stops the browser from saving anything on your phone: no history, no cookies kept after the window closes, no form entries. It changes nothing about what leaves the phone, so the Wi-Fi owner, your ISP and every site you visit see exactly what they would see otherwise. A VPN does the opposite: it hides your traffic from the network and your IP address from the sites, and does nothing about what the browser remembers. They solve two different problems, and using one when you meant the other is the most common privacy mistake on a phone.
What incognito does
Chrome describes it accurately on the incognito page itself. In an incognito window the browser does not save your browsing history, cookies and site data, or information entered in forms, and it discards the cookies when the last incognito tab is closed. Downloads and bookmarks are kept. That is the whole feature.
The effect is that someone picking up your phone later does not find the pages in history, and that sites you visited do not have a cookie waiting the next time you open a normal window. Sign in to a site in incognito and you are recognised by that site for as long as the window is open; close it and the session is gone.
What incognito does not do
The same incognito page says this too, and it is worth taking literally: your activity might still be visible to websites you visit, your employer or school, and your internet service provider. None of the traffic changes. DNS lookups go to the network's resolver in plain text, the site's name still appears in the TLS handshake, the site still sees your IP address and logs it, and the Wi-Fi owner or ISP sees all of it as usual.
It also does not stop tracking that does not depend on stored cookies. Your IP address, your device fingerprint, and any account you sign in to work in incognito exactly as they do outside it. And it applies only to the browser: every other app on the phone is untouched.
What a VPN does
A VPN wraps everything the phone sends, from every app, inside one encrypted connection to a VPN server. The network sees encrypted bytes to one address; the sites see the server's address instead of yours. The what a VPN hides post draws the boundary in detail.
It does nothing on the phone itself. History is still saved, cookies still accumulate, autofill still remembers what you typed. Sign in to a site over a VPN and the site knows exactly who you are, because you told it.
Side by side
| Incognito mode | VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Browsing history saved on the phone | No | Yes |
| Cookies kept after you finish | No | Yes |
| Wi-Fi owner or ISP can see site names | Yes | No |
| Sites see your real IP address | Yes | No |
| Covers apps other than the browser | No | Yes |
| Hides you from an account you sign in to | No | No |
| Hides you from a device fingerprint | No | No |
The last two rows are the same in both columns, and that is the point the Google and Facebook post makes at length: neither feature, alone or together, makes you unidentifiable to a service you are logged in to.
Which one you want
Someone else uses or sees this phone. Incognito. The concern is what is stored on the device, and a VPN stores just as much as normal browsing.
You are on Wi-Fi you do not control. A VPN. Incognito sends every site name to the café's router just as normal browsing does.
You do not want a site to know your home address. A VPN. The site logs the address the request came from, and incognito does not change it.
You want a search not to influence what you see later. Incognito, mostly. Signed-out searches in a fresh window do not attach to your account, though your IP address still reaches the search engine; add a VPN if that matters.
You want a site not to recognise you next time. Incognito clears the cookie; a VPN changes the address. Both, if the site uses both. Neither works if you sign in.
Using both together
They combine cleanly because they act at different layers. Incognito plus a VPN means nothing is stored on the phone from the session and nothing readable leaves the phone for the network, with the site seeing the VPN's address and a cookie-free browser. What remains is anything you type that identifies you, the device fingerprint, and the VPN provider's view of the destinations. On that last point, Culvert VPN does not log the websites you visit, your DNS queries or the contents of your traffic; its servers see only an opaque connection id, and it keeps your client IP address for up to 30 days for abuse handling, as set out in its privacy policy. The ad tracking post covers what fingerprints and SDKs still see.
For the half of the problem that incognito cannot touch, the network and the address, Culvert VPN is on Google Play.
Questions people also ask
Does incognito mode hide my browsing from the Wi-Fi owner?
No. Incognito changes what the browser stores on the phone and nothing about what leaves it. The router still sees every DNS lookup and every site name in the TLS handshake.
Do I still need incognito if I use a VPN?
If you do not want history or cookies left on the phone, yes. A VPN encrypts the traffic on its way out and stores exactly as much on the device as normal browsing does.
Does using both together stop all tracking?
No. A site you sign in to knows who you are, and device fingerprinting works in incognito over a VPN. Together they remove stored history, network visibility and your IP address, which is a lot, but not identity.