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For the sake of completeness, I've traced the evolution of the notice over time:
From 2008-07-26: "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" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/09911bf300f...)
From 2013-12-07: "Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, software, or people standing behind you." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/c5e36c57178...)
From 2013-12-13: "However, you aren't invisible. Going incognito doesn't hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/70821506825...)
From 2014-02-27: "However, you aren't invisible. Going incognito doesn't hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, governments and other sophisticated attackers, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/ab54bd65701...)
From 2014-04-29: "Going incognito doesn't hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/eb09a62ef40...)
From 2016-01-15: "However, you aren't invisible. Going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/b7dac1a6a79...)
From 2017-02-27: "Your activity might still be visible to: / • Websites you visit / • Your employer / • Your internet service provider" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/cfe102adddc...)
From 2017-03-29: "Your activity might still be visible to: / • Websites you visit / • Your employer or school / • Your internet service provider" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/7ca3ccf74e8...)
(Note that some of these were behind a feature flag for a few months.) Also, it looks like they've been intending to modify the new-tab page text for Incognito windows for some time, as part of the "Revamped Incognito NTP" project. You can view the modified text with 'chromium --enable-features=IncognitoNtpRevamp':
From 2021-08-13: "What Incognito doesn't do / Incognito does not make you invisible online: / • Sites know when you visit them / • Employers or schools can track browsing activity / • Internet service providers may monitor web traffic" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e6ae57ba385...)
From 2022-01-25: "What Incognito doesn't do / Incognito does not make you invisible online: / • Sites and the services they use can see visits / • Employers or schools can track browsing activity / • Internet service providers can monitor web traffic" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/8b349f6c984...)
> "Private Mode" automatically flips their internet traffic through some kind of reputable and open VPN
I figured out how to do this a couple years ago:
https://github.com/pmarks-net/incognito-proxy
If you have a VPN service that provides a SOCKS proxy server, the `chrome.proxy` API can tell Incognito tabs to use the proxy, while leaving normal tabs unaffected.