Google Chrome 76 will make it Difficult for Publishers to Detect Incognito Mode

A week after the release of Chrome 75, Google is already working on its new release with some of the attractive features.

Beta version of Chrome 76 was released a few days ago. The little twist of the feature allows to bypass paywalls. It could face opposition from sites that highly depend upon subscriptions and paywalls, like The New York Times, The Boston Globe and others.

These sites, for now, do not let users view articles in Private Browsing in Safari, Firefox or even in Incognito Mode in Chrome.

As Incognito Mode does not let site read or write cookies for a while and thus make it difficult for a publisher to analyze whether the user has reached their quota of free articles or either its paid access or not.

Seeing that the Incognito Mode allows reading an unlimited number of articles to users, The New York Times in February made it impossible to open articles in private mode.

Whereas, developers can add a short JavaScript code to check if you are using Incognito Mode or not through FileSystem API, whether enabled or not.


Incognito Mode disables the Chrome browser API that is read by applications to read and write documents or cookies. Using this trick several publishers recognize Incognito users and block them.

In Chrome 76, FileSystem API implementations have changed and now websites will not be able to identify when Chrome will be in Incognito mode.

Other than this, Flash will be disabled by default in Chrome 76 and can be opted-in by going to chrome://settings/content/flash.

Chrome has been encouraging the use of HTML5 instead of Adobe’s Flash for fast browsing experience. Recently Google announced that it will be removing Flash plug-in by the end of 2020, as Adobe itself will soon stop supporting Flash.

An additional button will be added to Omnibox, making it easier for users to install progressive web applications on the desktop. A little code will also be added to show the dark mode of the website to users who prefer it.

It is expected that the latest Chrome 76 will be made available by 30th July this year.

Google Chrome 76 beta makes it easier to dodge paywalls
Photo: Jon Fingas / Engadget

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