The New York Times Just Blocked The Easiest Way To Hack Its Paywall
In the two years since the New York Times slapped a paywall between casual readers and its coveted content, finding weak links in its armor has become something of a sport for webgoers.
Unfortunately, one of the most popular workarounds is no longer, NYMag's Joe Coscarelli reports:
The easiest little hack of all, for the Internet savvy, was right there on the page: Deleting the "?gwh=numbers" section of the URL removed the obtrusive "Pay for this!" banner blocking the words. Not anymore. Today we noticed the address-altering no longer cleared the in-house ad for non-subscribers. Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy confirmed as much in a statement:
"When we launched our digital subscription plan we knew there were loopholes to access our content beyond the allotted number of articles each month. We have made some adjustments and will continue to make adjustments to optimize the gateway by implementing technical security solutions to prohibit abuse and protect the value of our content."
We can't blame the Times for squirreling away as many subscriber dollars as they can, but fortunately for readers, there are still a few clever ways to get to the paper's content once you've surpassed the monthly limit.
Links from social media don't count, and opening posts in a different browser or deleting your cookies will work just as well.
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