Chrome 76 Prevents NYT and Other News Sites From Detecting Incognito Mode (arstechnica.com) 63
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: 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."
If websites find new loopholes to detect private mode, Google said they will close those, too. "Chrome will likewise work to remedy any other current or future means of Incognito Mode detection," Google's blog post said.
If websites find new loopholes to detect private mode, Google said they will close those, too. "Chrome will likewise work to remedy any other current or future means of Incognito Mode detection," Google's blog post said.
close advertising+tracking loopholes (Score:2)
So, will Chrome also close loopholes that are used to display ads or track?
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I wouldn't hold your breath, lol
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Sure they will! Anybody else having the ability to track is taking away from the Google monopoly.
Something like it happens on others browsers? (Score:2)
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firefxo in incognito mode can not read the NYT. There may be way to do that, but by default, no.
Re:Something like it happens on others browsers? (Score:4)
Can confirm, in Firefox incognito mode, disabling scripts on nytimes.com (using umatrix) will remove their incognito cock-block and allow you to read the articles.
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"My principal interest is in Mozilla Firefox..."
No need to. The main reason to use the private mode is to circumvent the sites' stupid pay-'walls' without having to delete their cookie every 3-5 articles, it saves clicking a button every now and then.
Firefox has an add-on that does that already.
Well that's sad (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually like the way that news sites often would give you 3 or 4 free article looks per month. I supbscribe to the journals I like to read a lot. But I still like to be able to follow interesting links to other sites on occasion.
The problem with that gift from them was that icognito mode made 3 free into unlimited free. This jeapordized that generous model that let me have 3 per month free.
Then the sites figured out a way to fix that. Which is great. They should get paid by regular users. So having a way to shut down abusers protected the 3-free model.
You could still subvert it by using multiple browsers of course, but the point is it became a nice road bump that at some point made trying to subvert it not worth the effort. Sort of like how Job's push to get $1/song instead of albums pretty much killed the market for piracy. It just wasn't worth the hassle for a $1 song.
This new move by google thus pees in the punchbowl. Were all going to lose those 3-free articles.
Why is that bad? Well consider how much you hate the Balkanization of video media right now... You used to be able to get everything you wanted on netflix. Now Disney and warner and others have pulled back their catalogs so you need a Disney or a Hulu subsciption too. One stop shopping was so much better.
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Really? If i buy a printed newspaper and i want to keep an article i can store the paper away or cut it out and stick it on the fridge, pin it to a cork board or stick it in a scrap book or post it to a friend. What can you do on a news website?
You can still print it out, stick it to the fridge, and/or stick it in a scrap book.
Printing it yourself costs you more money and that's if the button is there.
Yes, yes you are expected to cover the materials. Is someone supposed to give that to you for free?
Wants things free (3 articles) and doesn't give a fuck about the fact websites are exploiting the browser to invade your privacy.
I'm all for privacy, but whining that a free website stores a cookie to limit the number of free articles is just that -- whining.
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I'm a Gen-Xer, but I happen to live in a society that says "Fuck you! Go die in a gutter! More money for meeeeeeeee!"
In other words, "You should do all the work, and I don't want any restrictions on it or have to lift a finger because everyone should do stuff for meeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
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You could still subvert it by using multiple browsers of course, ...
Most of the time you can reset the free-article counter by clearing the cookies for that particular site. No need to more extreme measures.
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I don't disagree: the 3-free-articles idea is a nice one. But their ability or inability to block incognito mode isn't really that important: you can generally get your next set of free articles just by deleting all cookies from that site.
Meanwhile, it is important to privacy to actually be able to use incognito mode. If websites can detect it, it is all too likely that some of the websites you really should visit incognito will be among those doing the blocking. Hence making incognito mode essentially usel
Re:Well that's sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Paywalls break the internet. They want them to be open enough that search engines index them and people are willing to post them as links, but also want you to pay to access them. Those two things are incompatible.
Their business model is broken, so fuck 'em. I'm not going to de-anonymize myself for their benefit.
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Ridiculous. I've been using Incognito mode for YEARS to do exactly what you described and news sites didn't collapse.
They didn't? Well, maybe not incognito in particular, but the Internet and the expectation of "free news" absolute did cause a good chunk of the news business to collapse.
Same problem on Firefox (Score:3)
It seems like ad blockers are losing the war against detection. ABP is less and less effective, with pop-ups asking to disable the ad blocker everywhere.
When I occasionally load something without the blocker I'm reminded of why I use the blocker, ghostery, Ublock, etc. It's not only because the ads are over saturated, animated and obnoxious, but the threat of malware and excessive tracking in ad networks is still very much real.
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Always was able to access a local newspaper website using FireFox and my plethora of protective add-ons, selectively letting in just those URLs that were needed to display a very bare page. About a month ago, this stopped working, so I guess the newspaper's programmers found a way to block me and perhaps many others. Now, I just avoid the site and get my news elsewhere.
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ABP is less and less effective, with pop-ups asking to disable the ad blocker everywhere.
I think that's a sign that it's working, not that it's ineffective. If it was ineffective then you would see ads even with it running.
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It seems like ad blockers are losing the war against detection.
Actually sites are loosing the war against readership. If I get an Adblock whinge overlay that can't be removed by a "no overlay" plugin, the site doesn't get visited. I try to do this quickly so their analytics will show more and more users *not* staying to read the article.
Only WE can spy on you and steal data! (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey Google, why don't you close up all your personal data indexing and spying at the same time, if you are REALLY going to go to bat for user privacy!
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Are you President Madagascar?
https://bigmemes.funnyjunk.com... [funnyjunk.com]
Chrome 76 (Score:2)
Where's my canvas bag Todd?!
Oh wait, I'm not sure this is the right thread...
my incognito mode (Score:5, Interesting)
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i built a system that dynamically creates a new user on the fly with their home directory in ramdisk pre-populated from a template directory. then i just switch to that user and fire up my browser. nothing is written to disk but the browser operates normally. it thinks it is saving cookies and other stuff, but that's not to disk. this kind of thing is easy to do because i am running Linux as my desktop.
Do you have those scripts openly available somewhere?
Prediction (Score:2)
In the short term, all Google Chrome users will be treated as if they are in incognito mode and denied free articles.
In the long term, browsers will come with a built-in "fake human" that downloads everything as if it were not in incognito/adblocking/sanitize mode and runs the page in a "lightly filtered" sandbox - just enough to completely block cryptominers and other malware - then presents a cleaned-up version to the actual user. The sandbox and all associated client-side tracking information will be to
NYT workaround (Score:3)
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If you're going to do all of that then you should also know how to delete all data for a site. Developer Tools -> Storage or Application.
In other words (Score:1)
If websites find new loopholes to detect private mode, Google said they will close those, too.
Translation: "Get off our turf, punks - only Google is allowed to snoop on our users".
It's already there... (Score:3)
I'm surprised to see this on Slashdot. There's already a flag in Chrome starting in 74 enable a temp incognito filesystem. (Otherwise the filesystem API is blocked, allowing incognito mode detection). The change is that 76 will have it on by default.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-enable-google-chrome-incognito-mode-detection-blocking/
Unfortunately, I've already noticed a reaction, having turned it on this past week for access to The Washington Post (Yeah, I know, but I live here)- they knocked the number of free articles down to two instead of the old 5 or so. This actually does cross my threshold for making it annoying enough not to use- having to restart incognito, finding where I was in the home page, etc. I still won't pay for it on general principles, though.
That said, and this is tangential- I will deal with decently designed ads. However, they're all CRAP. How many Java VMs or whatever need to be spun off to handle the myriad crap? (I like to run with lots of open tabs). Couple this with Chrome's annoying architecture of a separate process for each tab, and my machine screeches to 50% speed and loses a ton of memory without using AdBlock. This is doubly annoying when traveling, because I carry an Air- it's *light*, I love it- and runs ssh just fine, but it's low on CPU to start with, and all of this crap shortens the battery life drastically. Then there's the malware vector... Ugh.
Edge browser fails on NYT (Score:2)
NYT is already broken on the Microsoft Edge browser. If you go to a specific article after clearing all cookies, the page assumes that you're in incognito mode and forces you to sign in to read an article.