InPrivate browsing is a browsing scheme through which users can browse the internet without leaving a trail in the browser.

InPrivate browsing prevents anyone else who might be using a system from seeing the browsing that the previous use has carried out.

It doesn’t store any kind of information related to the browsing pattern of the user.

InPrivate browsing is available in almost all the browsers i.e. Internet Explorer 8.0 and 9.0, Firefox 3.5 and later versions, Google Chrome, Opera, etc. 

When InPrivate browsing is started by the user, it opens a new window of the browser. The information regarding the browsing i.e. cookies, temporary files, etc. does get stored but they are stored in a protected area that is controlled by the operating system and no process is allowed access to those resources.

Once the browser closes the InPrivate session, all those cookies and temporary files are deleted and no trace is left on the system. The information that is affected because of InPrivate browsing are cookies, temporary Internet files, web page history, form data, passwords, auto complete information, etc.

All these information does get stored temporarily, but cleared when the user exits the InPrivate session.

InPrivate browsing is a means of defense against the hackers and software which might want to access the browsing patterns of the user and based on that either use that information for malicious purpose of present targeted ads to the user for luring them to sites which might be harmful.

Deletion of the files as mentioned above will prevent from session hijacking attacks and prevent re-use of cookies for malicious use.

Few things need to be kept in mind though regarding InPrivate browsing. InPrivate browsing doesn’t provide protection against traffic sniffing as packets will be still traversing the network.

InPrivate browsing doesn’t provide anonymity while browsing. Finally if the user has added any bookmarks or feeds onto the browser, they won’t be removed.