Google Chrome has a secret tongue-in-cheek message for heavy porn users

Google Chrome's "Incognito mode" offers internet users a way to use the web without fear of it appearing in their browser history.

While it was once marketed as a way to secretly buy gifts or plan anniversary surprises, most users know it as a way to privately browse porn.

Now Google has addressed the elephant in the room by adding a cheeky message for heavy users of its incognito mode.

In Chrome's normal mode, users who open up 100 or more browser tabs are shown a smiley face.

The face appears instead of the tab counter in the top right hand of their browser.

But after a new update, in Incognito mode this smiley face instead becomes a winking face.

Chrome's new winking message only appears on the Android version of the app.

In iOS versions of the browser, opening 100 Incognito tabs simply brings up a normal smiley face.

It is not known if the company intends to include the tongue-in-cheek message in its iOS browser in future.

'We're not sure why this happens, but we think it may be that the app wasn't designed to have more than two characters in the number of tabs field,' Mashable journalist Freia Lobo said.

"So instead of having three tiny characters in the field, they just switch over to smileys which have two characters."

Google Chrome is a treasure trove of hidden features and messages, known in internet slang as "Easter Eggs".

These include an incredibly addictive video game, accessed by pressing the space bar when an internet page won't load.

A dinosaur on the page will spring to life and run across the screen, users can press space bar to help him dodge obstacles.

Desktop Chrome users who search "Google in 1998" from their browser bar are transported back in time as their search results are presented as if plugged into Google's original 90's search engine.

And Chrome users who search "Beam me up, Scotty" in Youtube will find their video results pop onto the page as if teleported from Star Trek's U.S.S. Enterprise.