Show HN: Incoggo – Free Adblocker for Paywalls

This is a lot of security to give away in order to read news articles for free.<p>From <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;incoggo.com&#x2F;faq&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;incoggo.com&#x2F;faq&#x2F;</a><p><pre><code> If you’re a very security-minded individual (or you use your computer for very sensitive tasks), before using Incoggo you may want to be aware that the application does the following: Upon installation, Incoggo adds a file to your system’s sudoers.d folder that whitelists specific commands from requiring a sudo password to perform. (This allows Incoggo to manage your system proxy settings, kill certain processes on shutdown &#x2F; restart, and perform tasks related to Incoggo’s auto-updating feature without requiring that a sudo password be prompted each time.) Incoggo loads external Javascript files when you visit specific domains (i.e. those we filter paywalls &#x2F; clear cookies on &#x2F; clear storage on &#x2F; etc.). Incoggo overwrites a few system defaults (re: open page &#x2F; process limits) at runtime for performance reasons. Upon installation, Incoggo also installs a trusted root certificate in your system keystore. This is required for Incoggo’s advanced filtering functionality to work (unlike the issues above – which we intend to clean up shortly – this one is a hard requirement for the app to work).</code></pre>

It&#x27;s hard for me to understand how and why you are developing an app and a website and all the other stuff for free, then I read your privacy policy and maybe I&#x27;m understand: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;incoggo.com&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;incoggo.com&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;</a><p>Anyway thanks for the effort and the transparency, I&#x27;ll consider to install it on a secondary browser just for read some articles.

Uh... why isn&#x27;t this a browser extension? Asking me to install an entire program onto my computer is extremely sketchy.

Thinking about possible cat and mouse between such a solution and advertisement strategists would keeping your tactics hidden slow down countering by such advert vendors ?

Also curious: how is this different than a browser extension &#x2F; how do you all plan to make money if the product is free?

This is really cool, but I don&#x27;t really get why full MITM is needed when all the paywall code is executed in the browser.<p>If news sites started using methods outside the browser for determining if you have access, like allowlisting IP addresses, how could this bypass that? Projects like bypass-paywalls-chrome [1] (which works on firefox) get the job done just fine. Is there really a scenario where this is needed to unblock a website?<p>Additionally, parts of the privacy policy strongly implying browsing history is collected and sold - although I may have misinterpreted this. My apologies if so. &quot;Information We Collect When You Use... the Desktop Application... [we collect] your web browsing history (URLs that you visit)... [and] WE USE THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT... To generate and share aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified information about the web browsing activity of all of our users with our partners and other third parties for marketing, advertising, research, or similar purposes&quot; [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;iamadamdev&#x2F;bypass-paywalls-chrome" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;iamadamdev&#x2F;bypass-paywalls-chrome</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;incoggo.com&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;incoggo.com&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;</a>

So it blocks paywall but doesn&#x27;t bypass it? I don&#x27;t understand the purpose of this.

When did a paid subscription to a periodical become synonymous with advertising?<p>That said, I hope they support video soon so I can get rid of that annoying NetflixHBOHuluDisney+ paywall.