Isn’t it frustrating when you follow an interesting link only for a paywall to pop up and block the article you want to read?
A paywall is a website-limiting mechanism that forces you to subscribe to the publication. Almost all major news websites have paywalls.
It doesn’t make sense to subscribe to a webpage when you only want occasional access to their publications.
Most news websites publish credible articles that could benefit your research, so bypassing these paywalls whenever you want to read an article from these sources could be valuable.
Why Do News Websites Set Up Paywalls?
News publishers make their articles available online to adapt to the digital age. The revenue they once got from printing newspapers is no more. They resolve to charge a monthly subscription or membership fee to recoup their expenses.
Additionally, most credible news outlets publish exclusive content about business, the stock market, medical research, and finance.
They contain unique research details you can’t find in any ordinary publication. Gaining access to this information could be helpful. But how can you go around the paywalls of such leading news websites? Here is how.
1. Use Browsers That Hide Your IP Address
Most leading news outlets offer limited monthly access to their websites. It can range from one to four articles before the paywall pops up.
These are soft paywalls. They usually track your IP address alongside your cookies to determine the threshold before they force you to subscribe. You can bypass them by hiding your IP address using proxies.
ISP proxies have many use cases, but the best one is the ability to bypass paywalls while also boosting your privacy.
On the other hand, tunneling proxy servers let you hide your real IP address, making it harder to detect. Proxies also allow you to use multiple IP addresses to simulate different devices. As a result, you can access the website as if you were on another device altogether, avoiding paywalls.
2. Clear Browsing Data
As you browse through various websites, you leave traces in the form of cookies and cached files or images. Leading news websites utilize your cookies to create a personalized experience while accessing their sites.
They also use browsing data to determine if they need to limit your access by popping up a paywall. Clearing your browsing data will eliminate these cached files and cookies, giving you the chance to access their websites multiple times.
Note that some websites track your IP address alongside cookies. In such cases, clearing browsing data is not enough to bypass paywalls. Here’s where a proxy to mask your IP address might come in handy.
3. Use Paywall Bypass Browser Extensions
The most common web browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge let you add paywall bypass extensions. Nonetheless, the extensions are not effective on all websites. One of the most effective ones is Bypass Paywalls. It is a GitHub Chrome/ Edge extension that you can use to bypass paywalls on most news websites.
Other browsers like Firefox also have paywall bypass extensions available. To use these extensions, you need to download and unzip the installers and enable the developer option before adding them to your browser. Once installed, you can enable them when accessing any news website with a paywall.
4. Use Websites’ Cached Versions
To open the cached version of a website, you can try typing the word ‘site’ followed by the domain name and dot com.
The ‘site’ operator is a useful special command you can use during searches to restrict your results to a specific domain. For example, you can type ‘site:nytimes.com’ followed by your search query for Google to limit the results to The New York Times website. This way, you will only see search results for this site.
Check whether the website is cache-enabled by opening the tree dot menu after the search result. This way, you can access the web pages without encountering a paywall. However, some leading news websites no longer show cached web pages when you use this method.
You might not find cached results for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal. As a result, you must put extra effort into finding cached versions of other websites.
Final Words
Employing the techniques above will let you bypass the paywalls of leading news websites. You can access all the content from various web pages without spending money on subscriptions.
However, be mindful that websites constantly find new ways to enforce paywalls. While bypassing these paywalls saves you extra cash, it is important to support good journalism if you want to ensure they keep publishing exclusive content.
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