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Comment by ygaf | Hacker News Reader

In the last two days I've encountered unprecedented resistance to adblockers (more accurately script blocking) around the net.

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This particular blocker is insidious - even blocks incognito.

  We noticed you're browsing in private or incognito mode.
  To continue reading this article, please exit incognito 
  mode

Wow. What would be the possible reason for blocking incognito?

You still get the full ad experience? I can't support any company that is demanding that they not only serve their ads but also be allowed to track the visitor after.

Retargeting.

It says in the 'error' screen why they are blocking incognito.. so that they can accurately count how many articles you have read. Seems fair enough to me.

> Wow. What would be the possible reason for blocking incognito?

This is what the blocking page reads:

> Visitors are allowed 3 free articles per month (without a subscription), and private browsing prevents us from counting how many stories you've read.

They explain this on the blocking page:

------------

Why we made this change

Visitors are allowed 3 free articles per month (without a subscription), and private browsing prevents us from counting how many stories you've read. We hope you understand, and consider subscribing for unlimited online access.

-----------

It's not about ads, it's about free access before a paywall.

Yeah but I mean, if the mechanism they're using relies on not using incognito, that means you should just be able to delete their cookies and keep getting access.

How is incognito mode detected?

Maybe something like this:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2909367/can-you-determin...

I could only suggest to stop using their site.

There's a simple solution to this: ctrl-w

I pay for content. I pay to receive content without ads. Any company who wants me to "pay" via advertising will not get "payment" from me. Full stop.

uBlock Origin seems unaffected (but private browsing still trips it.) Overall, I just exit the page and don't even consider switching off my adblocker, so it hardly matters to me, personally. I imagine most people are on the same boat.

I had no problem accessing the page with uBlock and Ghostery (maybe they're listening?). However I was blocked via private/incognito mode.

umatrix here. I saw 1 cookie (from techreview itself), although enabling googletagservices/etc leads to more techreview cookies. Enabled everything google and it still wasn't good enough for them. If it's not google doing their tracking work, that's just being awkward.

uBlock Origin works fine for me, but blocking incognito mode is next-level skullduggery. I hope these guys fail.

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