==================================== What This Extension Does

This tiny and efficient extension can help you use certain websites which don't allow incognito mode. These websites usually let you read a few pages per month for free, but charge for unlimited access. If you try to use incognito mode, they may tell you that they don't allow using incognito mode. This extension can help you fool them into thinking that you're NOT using incognito mode, even though you actually ARE!

• This will not work on all websites, but should work on most websites IF they tell you they do not allow private or incognito mode.
• This will not magically give you access to web pages that require a subscription to view a member-only section. It does however, help with many web sites that will let you view 5 or so pages per month for free, because by going incognito, you can reset your 5 per month counter.
• This extension will only activate the incognito-cloaking behavior on incognito browser tabs.
• You must still activate incognito tabs yourself.

==================================== Installation

IMPORTANT!!! - This extension requires special installation.

You install it from the Chrome Web Store the same way as any other extension, but after you install it you MUST change the extension configuration to allow this extension to operate inside incognito tabs. If you don't do this, it won't work at all.

To configure it:

1. in Chrome goto Menu > More Tools > Extensions (the Menu button icon looks like ⋮ or ☰).
2. Find the entry for this extension (the name is "Hide Incognito Mode") and click the "More Details" button.
3. Enable the "Allow in incognito" setting (sometimes they say allow in private window, instead of incognito).

See a short video of these steps at http://rehfeld.us/browser-extensions/hide-incognito-mode/setup.html

==================================== Usage

Once you've installed and configured the extension, you can just browse the web using incognito like you normally would, and this extension's incognito-cloaking behavior should automatically prevent many sites from detecting you. However, some websites have strong detection abilities, and may still detect you, blocking you from reading their page. If this happens, consider enabling Bandit Mode.

This extension has 2 modes to choose from:

Normal Mode - this default mode enables the incognito-cloaking behavior Bandit Mode - automatically clears your cookies and private data on every page load, in addition to enabling the incognito-cloaking behavior

Websites can still use cookies and other tracking strategies when you're incognito, and sometimes they do this to prevent you from reading more than 1 page while incognito. Even though they may not be able to tell if you're incognito, they can still use cookies to limit you in various ways, such as page views. Bandit Mode is designed to help in this scenario.

However, clearing private data on each page load will make some sites misbehave, or even outright break. So you will need to experiment to find out if Bandit or Normal mode works best for your personal usage behavior on each website.

It's easy to switch between modes, just left-click the mask icon in the top-right of your browser, then choose. See screenshots at http://rehfeld.us/browser-extensions/hide-incognito-mode/usage

==================================== Author's Intention

If you really enjoy a website's content, be a good Netizen and subscribe to them. This extension is intended to be used by people who have already subscribed to the membership website, but want to read without logging in, perhaps for the following reasons: they desire to maintain a high level of privacy by reading in full incognito without logging in, or they've misplaced their login credentials, or they're temporarily on a different computer that cannot login etc... It's not intended to bypass their membership fee.

==================================== How it works

(deep technical stuff, for programmers) http://rehfeld.us/browser-extensions/hide-incognito-mode/how-it-works

==================================== Credits

http://rehfeld.us/browser-extensions/hide-incognito-mode/credits

==================================== Privacy

http://rehfeld.us/browser-extensions/hide-incognito-mode/privacy-policy

==================================== Change log

V1.10 - July 16, 2021 Increase storage quota limits, and alter them for certain user agents. This should defeat a popular detection script used by some websites. V1.9 - Mar 13, 2021 Reduce chance of incognito detection by mocking navigator.language when incognito, ensuring it has 2 entries like it does when running non incognito. V1.7 - Oct 7, 2020 Added Bandit Mode to automatically clear cookies and private data on each page load. V1.6 - Mar 26, 2020 Improved effectiveness and compatibility - now works on many more websites. V1.5 - Nov 20, 2019 Improved Extension description and usage instructions. V1.4 - Sep 7, 2019 Improved setup instructions. V1.3 - Aug 22, 2019 Removed storage permission. V1.2 - Aug 21, 2019 Added new patch to prevent disk storage quota sniffing as an incognito detection method. This has become popular on some websites since Chrome 74. V1.1 - Only show setup instructions on initial install. V1.0 - Initial release.