
NY Times Blocking Incognito Browsers - joegahona
http://www.niemanlab.org/2019/02/your-favorite-way-to-get-around-the-new-york-times-paywall-might-be-about-to-go-away/
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rahimnathwani
This will probably stop working.

From the bottom of the article:

"There is one way the timing is odd, though. In order to treat incognito
browsers differently, a website needs to be able to determine that they’re
incognito browsers. Earlier this month, it came out that Google Chrome, the
web’s most popular browser, was working to prevent sites from doing just that.
Code that blinds servers to private browsing has already been added to the
current Canary version of Chrome (a version used for early developer testing).
New features in Canary, if all goes well, typically roll out to the standard
Google Chrome in three or four months — so this sort of tactic will likely
break by summer in the browser that currently has 63 percent market share.

By the way, I tested this out: Running the current Google Chrome Canary
(74.0.3718.0) and turning on the internal setting for the change (#enable-
filesystem-in-incognito in chrome://flags) meant the Times suddenly lost its
ability to detect incognito mode."

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netsharc
This style of article of "Let's post 4-5 random tweets of people mentioning
the points!" annoys me...

My main browser is Vivaldi, I now have Firefox set-up to clear cookies, etc,
on exit, so if I want to browse WaPo I load up Firefox and the website thinks
I'm just a fresh user (although this too has stopped working with WaPo's
site...).

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dandersh
Disabling JavaScript should be a suitable work around as it requires JS to run
their check for private browsing. Also I have JS disabled by default and I
have no issues accessing articles from the NYT, WaPo, etc.

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olliej
It seems like the best option given the business model.

Essentially, if they want to limit a given person to N articles a month they
need to be able to in some way identify them. If a person is using private
mode then theoretically there isn’t a way to track them, so your option is to
either not allow them to read articles at all, or actively search for, and
exploit, some break in privacy. I like to imagine that many companies think
that is not the right thing to do.

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GeekyBear
Browser extensions that automatically delete site cookies when you close all
the tabs for a given site (unless you manually add the site to your whitelist)
still work and involve the least amount of ongoing user hassle.

Cookie Autodelete on Firefox, for example.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-
autode...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/)

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sublupo
Can someone explain how they can detect if you are in incognito mode? I didn't
understand the article's explanation. From what I understand, it checks if you
can store cookies. But doesn't incognito store cookies until you close the
window? When I just opened YouTube in incognito, I get generic
recommendations. But after watching several videos, I get recommendations
based on what I watched, which I presume, are stored as cookies.

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RandomBK
Some web APIs are disabled in incognito mode, yet are almost universally
present on modern browsers. By attempting to use these APIs, a web page can
detect if you are in Incognito. If the API is blocked, they can reasonably
assume you are.

~~~
sublupo
Thanks. What were some examples of those APIs?

~~~
JonoW
I believe FileSystem API is one of them.

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thenanyu
I wonder when a newspaper will try pay-as-you-go. $10 gets you 20 additional
article credits in your allowance. Or maybe a cheaper lite subscription with a
higher article limit or just A-section or something.

~~~
dominicr
You mean something like Blendle?
[https://launch.blendle.com/](https://launch.blendle.com/)

Basically top up your credit and pay per article from a range of news sources.
Although it's not (yet?) as integrated, featured and wide spread as it needs
to be to be really useful.

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cylinder
I've been wondering about this and was about to make an HN thread asking about
it as I couldn't find anything online.

I'm no longer able to bypass the paywall via Incognito Mode. It appears to be
IP-based and perhaps even guessing based on geolocation? I sometimes can't
even get around it by using a VPN in a different country.

And now, I've seen it block Incognito browers (I have to login to be able to
read in Incognito). But oddly, I left the browser open on that page and about
ten minutes later the paywall disappeared and I could see the full article.

NYT should just go full paywall like FT. No way around it. if you are paying
for a subscription you should feel confident knowing there's no way to bypass
and get the content free.

the dumbest paywall is the Australian Financial Review's. you can just hit
Escape and stop the page before the paywall loads. or use Outline.com or
Textise as the content is all there, it's just behind a css element. and they
charge subscribers like $1,000 per year.

~~~
joegahona
Instead of incognito, what if you just march through a bunch of different
browsers in their non-incognito modes?

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js2
Disable JavaScript. Bonus: the site loads much faster.

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joegahona
I was not able to replicate (the article suggests it might be a test).

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dekhn
I can. It doesn't always happen, but I have seen it.

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Scoundreller
I cringe the day where my connection gets temp-banned because my browser
rendered the site too quickly because I disabled all the junk a page loads.

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_khau
the NYT has really done downhill over the years, so I'm exactly bristling at
the thought of losing access to it.

