I saw you mentioned that you are acting as a local proxy to unlock sites. Does that mean you are reusing an actual WSJ subscription (as an example) to give me access to articles?
How is this ok? Am I going to get in trouble for using this?
All of this seems super sketchy and I’d really appreciate and explanation of how this actually works.
@Shaun_Regenbaum I understand your concern! As far as how the ‘Block Paywalls’ app actually works under the hood, yes Incoggo is a local proxy, but no, under no circumstances do we ever reuse subscriptions to supported sites.
For the sites supported by Block Paywalls, there are a wide variety of techniques we employ (every site is slightly different), but all techniques are strictly employed on the ‘client-side’ (meaning everything that the application does, happens exclusively on your computer – similar to how other adblockers function).
Examples of some of the basic techniques we use are:
All of the techniques essentially boil down to preventing a site from tracking you individually.
It’s technically super similar to other adblockers you might use / other Incoggo apps, so no – you have nothing at all to worry about when using Block Paywalls!
So does that mean it will not work for articles that are locked except for subscribers? (as are common for many WSJ articles or Techcrunch+ articles?)
It depends on the specifics of the individual publication, but in most cases, yes that’s accurate!