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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, Insightful) by Mer on Monday July 22 2019, @09:50AM (4 children)
From what I understand, this is about the sites that do let you access a small number of articles for free before paywalling refusing to show anything in incognito mode. Not entirely paywalled sites.
You can still manually remove the cookies and browse in normal mode.
A better analogy would be "We have free samples. A hippie had to be ousted after trying to eat the whole platter. Now we won't allow you in the store unless you have a fresh haircut."
Except to the media site, their whole stock is free samples because they don't understand how the tech works and prefer being spiteful about it rather than get a business model that makes sense.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 22 2019, @02:13PM (3 children)
First of all, I'm pretty sure they "understand how the tech works." They just implemented a solution that will work with 98% of people browsing their site, because PEOPLE (in general) don't understand how tech works.
Second, I don't view this as "spiteful" at all. They want to set the terms for a user to use their content/service. You don't like it? Don't use their website. The New York Times has no legal or moral obligation to serve people browsing in Incognito Mode. Too many people don't like it? Well, then their business model fails. On the other hand, maybe the "hippies" aren't enough of their potential subscriber base that they care about whether they're excluded -- and maybe they can get enough people to sign up otherwise to pay their bills.
Frankly, it's clear what their intent is. If you do something like delete cookies to get around their restrictions, it's somewhat dishonest (and probably against terms of service). Note that I'm NOT saying they have a "good" business model or that I agree with how they are setting things up. But it's their content, and they've pretty clearly set up a system to tell you how they'll allow you to access it. If you find a technical loophole around it, it's not very different from finding a way to fake an electronic key signal to sneak through a door into a movie theater without paying. Should the theater have implemented better security on its doors? Maybe. But you're still taking an end-run around how the managers clearly intend for you to access their service.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday July 22 2019, @03:36PM (2 children)
I don't think you have to be a tech genius to notice that all news sites carry 99% the exact same content and that reading about the latest story on different sites is an exercise in experiencing redundancy. When I hit one of those "you've read three articles" things, almost invariably I can find the exact same content by running the the exact same headline through a search engine.
The ONLY thing a news site might have that won't be found elsewhere is local news and non-syndicated opinion columns, but if you're looking for opinion stuff, the internet is full of it. That leaves local news but that's also easy to get around. In large markets the content is likely to be repeated over multiple local sources. If the local news is serious, it will be covered widely. The only thing that is really left to effectively block, is local news in small markets of an inconsequential nature -- like closing a public park for construction or something like that, and such news is easy to live without.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 22 2019, @05:48PM (1 child)
I'm not really sure what this has to do with the quotation you drew from my previous post, given that I was talking about the New York Times, which (unlike many online news sources) still produces a large amount of original content. Sure, they still report wire stories, as most newspapers do, and that's a significant chunk of their content.
But the ONLY time I go to the New York Times site is to read articles that aren't available anywhere else, and that's usually a few times per month. Some sources -- like the New York Times or the New Yorker or the Atlantic, etc. -- still produce a significant amount of longer articles ("features," investigative reporting, etc.) that originate with them.
It's pretty rare I hit the NYT cap of articles per month, but I have, because occasionally I get links sent to me from friends or see links to articles on sites (like this one) that have original content I can't find elsewhere. It isn't all "opinion" or "local news" as you assert in your reply either.
If we were discussing 99% of online news sources, I'd pretty much agree with you. That wasn't the example under discussion. The Washington Post also has more in-depth coverage of D.C. politics often too, but I've given up on WaPo links, because they clearly don't want free users at all. (And I also disagree seriously with some of their editorial decisions over the years, so I question their integrity as a news organization.) I also don't follow Wired links either, because they made it clear that they don't want people with ad blockers. But Wired too often has original technology article features that aren't published elsewhere.
What you seem to be talking about as "news" isn't really what I want to read. That's the everyday soundbite-length ephemeral crap the media spoons up every morning to keep people numb to real in-depth conversation and ideas. The kind of articles I want to read -- and do, for the most part, read -- are often content I can't find at other "news" organizations, because they tend to be feature-length in-depth reporting that doesn't go out on the AP wire.
But to each his own. If you find all of the content you want to read anywhere, and you're getting it from organizations who are legally qualified to republish it and are happy with your choice to not employ blockers, enjoy!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday July 22 2019, @08:06PM
My point was that you don't need to be a computer genius to avoid a paywall -- most ordinary users will be able to do that.
As for NYT and WaPo -- if I want war starting propaganda or Bernie hatred, then yeah, I'd go there. But I have them in /etc/hosts because I view them as far more dangerous and disingenuous than anything out there. The NYT cost how many lives cheerleading for the Iraq war? The WaPo had a major hand in giving us Hillary which is indistinguishable from giving us Trump (although I have to say, we haven't gotten in any new wars with Trump beyond a few low level skirmishes in Syria -- Trump was definitely the lesser evil because if we had HRC, I have no doubt we'd already be two years into some ground war in Syria).