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by djkoolaide 1338 days ago
I'd like to know this, too -- how can a website even know if my browser is in private mode?
1 comments

depending on which browser you are using there are slight changes to the api's accessable to web sites depending if you are in private mode or not. For example, in firefox private mode service workers are not avalable so a simple check to see if navigator.serviceWorker is undefined is all you need. Other browsers have other tells such as what types of storage are avilable, the size of storage (if avalable).
I have service workers disabled in my main firefox profile and haven't noticed any websites breaking because of it.
Its not the only signal, was just the first one that jumped to mind.

EDIT: Looks like tmobile are checking indexedDB to check if firefox is in private mode or not.