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> It’s a soft paywall, protected only by cookies and JavaScript, bypass-able by using private browsing/incognito mode. Not true. I tried that. > They generat

by zepto 5y ago

> It’s a soft paywall, protected only by cookies and JavaScript, bypass-able by using private browsing/incognito mode. Not true. I tried that. > They generate nice shareable url like this one for this article: https://archive.is/y58Py https://archive.is/y58Py This is helpful.

skygazer 5y ago
Well, I can't know if you're invoking it properly, but it's true of modern browsers. That's the whole purpose of private/incognito mode, to not share your previous cookies with the visited site, so if it doesn't work for you and you're entering private/incognito before visiting the article url, then there's something amiss with your configuration and you're not browsing privately at all. Or, perhaps you never leave private browsing mode, and so you keep your private mode cookies alive indefinitely, defeating the whole purpose of private mode -- ironically, it works best if you don't leave it on continuously. There's a lot of subtlety in technology. :) The full article is indeed returned upon your request and hidden by your browser after the fact. You can prove this to yourself by dropping to a unix-like command line and typing: curl -L 'https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/19/apple-csam-abuse-encryption-security-privacy-dangerous' and you'll see, if you look carefully, the full text of the article embedded within that extremely verbose result, just as the browser sees it before it's hidden by javascript after inspecting your cookies. I'm not sure you wanted to know all of this, but it feels like wanting to understand how things work is why hacker news exists.
- zepto 5y ago
  > Well, I can't know if you're invoking it properly, but it's true of modern browsers. No it isn’t. > There's a lot of subtlety in technology. :) Agreed. Perhaps you are missing something. > The full article is indeed returned upon your request and hidden by your browser after the fact. You can prove this to yourself … This is irrelevant to whether private browsing solves the problem or not.
  - skygazer 5y ago
    You are a delight. Thanks for brightening my day.

by zepto 5y ago

skygazer 5y ago

Well, I can't know if you're invoking it properly, but it's true of modern browsers. That's the whole purpose of private/incognito mode, to not share your previous cookies with the visited site, so if it doesn't work for you and you're entering private/incognito before visiting the article url, then there's something amiss with your configuration and you're not browsing privately at all. Or, perhaps you never leave private browsing mode, and so you keep your private mode cookies alive indefinitely, defeating the whole purpose of private mode -- ironically, it works best if you don't leave it on continuously. There's a lot of subtlety in technology. :) The full article is indeed returned upon your request and hidden by your browser after the fact. You can prove this to yourself by dropping to a unix-like command line and typing: curl -L 'https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/19/apple-csam-abuse-encryption-security-privacy-dangerous' and you'll see, if you look carefully, the full text of the article embedded within that extremely verbose result, just as the browser sees it before it's hidden by javascript after inspecting your cookies. I'm not sure you wanted to know all of this, but it feels like wanting to understand how things work is why hacker news exists.

zepto 5y ago
> Well, I can't know if you're invoking it properly, but it's true of modern browsers. No it isn’t. > There's a lot of subtlety in technology. :) Agreed. Perhaps you are missing something. > The full article is indeed returned upon your request and hidden by your browser after the fact. You can prove this to yourself … This is irrelevant to whether private browsing solves the problem or not.
- skygazer 5y ago
  You are a delight. Thanks for brightening my day.