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Chrome 76 prevents NYT and other news sites from detecting Incognito Mode
Google Chrome 76 will close a loophole that websites use to detect when people use the browser's Incognito Mode.
Over the past couple of years, you may have noticed some websites preventing you from reading articles while using a browser's private mode. The Boston Globe began doing this in 2017, requiring people to log in to paid subscriber accounts in order to read in private mode. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers impose identical restrictions.
Chrome 76 - which is in beta now and is scheduled to hit the stable channel on July 30 - prevents these websites from discovering that you're in private mode. Google explained the change yesterday in a blog post titled, "Protecting private browsing in Chrome."
Google wrote:
Today, some sites use an unintended loophole to detect when people are browsing in Incognito Mode. Chrome's FileSystem API is disabled in Incognito Mode to avoid leaving traces of activity on someone's device. Sites can check for the availability of the FileSystem API and, if they receive an error message, determine that a private session is occurring and give the user a different experience.
With the release of Chrome 76 scheduled for July 30, the behavior of the FileSystem API will be modified to remedy this method of Incognito Mode detection.
Using the Chrome 76 beta today, I confirmed that the Boston Globe, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times were unable to detect that my browser was in private mode. However, all three sites were able to detect private mode in Safari for Mac, Firefox, and Chrome 75.
Google acknowledged that websites might find new loopholes to detect private mode, but it pledged to close those, too. "Chrome will likewise work to remedy any other current or future means of Incognito Mode detection," Google's blog post said. [...]
(Score: 3, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 22 2019, @08:11AM (3 children)
Does incognito mode in Chrome stop Google from spying on you?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22 2019, @08:28AM (1 child)
Google says so.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday July 22 2019, @01:37PM
Then it must be true.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Informative) by darkfeline on Monday July 22 2019, @08:38AM
Yes and no. It's amazing how many people, including supposedly technically literate people, don't understand what incognito does. All it does it wipe any client data at the end of the session, basically. That means no browsing history or cookies are saved after the session. This does not prevent websites from tracking you in any way whatsoever, except insofar as they rely on the client to permanently store cookies (spoilers for time travelers from the past: you're still very trackable even without permanent cookies).
Thus, Incognito stops Google websites from tracking (spying on?) you the same as it does for any other website when you block long lived cookies, which is not very much at all.
Incognito is primarily for stopping other users from spying on you, e.g., a family member from seeing the porn you browse.
For fucks sake, the Incognito landing page even says this, but people can't read:
Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity.
Your activity might still be visible to:
Websites you visit
Your employer or school
Your internet service provider
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