The Student Room Group

Telegraph paywall - easy to get round?

The Daily Telegraph seem to have introduced their paywall - they are displaying a subscribe screen after 20 free article views in one month.

So far, it appears that all you need to do to get around it is to delete all the cookies that have the word 'telegraph' in them. In Chrome, these are easily accessed from the Settings / Advanced Settings / Content Settings / All Cookies and Site Data menu.

This speedily restores the site and no need to pay.

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1
Helpful! :smile:
Original post by tjf8
Helpful! :smile:


A nearby Sheldon-type was helpful! :cool:

Does this method work on the Times/Financial Times I wonder?
Reply 3
One's curious to wonder what might happen if you set your browsers to simply refuse cookies from that site.
Reply 4
Original post by Fullofsurprises
A nearby Sheldon-type was helpful! :cool:

Does this method work on the Times/Financial Times I wonder?


I though The Times only let you read 2 paragraphs anyway? :s-smilie:
Original post by miser
One's curious to wonder what might happen if you set your browsers to simply refuse cookies from that site.


Is that easy to do?
Reply 6
Original post by Fullofsurprises
Is that easy to do?

The instructions for Chrome are on this website: http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95647

Click 'Make exceptions for cookies from specific websites or domains' and follow the instructions. :h:
Original post by Fullofsurprises
Is that easy to do?


For Firefox right click, select view page info and then edit permissions. Allow sessions cookies is working fine for me atm, since it allows you to login to their comments.

I don't know of a workaround for the times, anyone know one?

For the FT (seriously, it's the best one for serious news) just use an extension to supply the site with the googlebot user agent string.

The economist also works fine with cookies blocked.
Original post by AnonymousPenguin


For the FT (seriously, it's the best one for serious news) just use an extension to supply the site with the googlebot user agent string.


What does this mean, in layperson's terms please? Something to do with Googling?
Reply 9
Original post by AnonymousPenguin
For Firefox right click, select view page info and then edit permissions. Allow sessions cookies is working fine for me atm, since it allows you to login to their comments.

I don't know of a workaround for the times, anyone know one?

For the FT (seriously, it's the best one for serious news) just use an extension to supply the site with the googlebot user agent string.

The economist also works fine with cookies blocked.

PRSOM. :smile: I didn't know of this googlebot user agent trick!
Reply 10
Torygraph is essentially a tabloid disguised as a respectable paper as it is evident from the content that can be found there.
Original post by Fullofsurprises
The Daily Telegraph seem to have introduced their paywall - they are displaying a subscribe screen after 20 free article views in one month.

So far, it appears that all you need to do to get around it is to delete all the cookies that have the word 'telegraph' in them. In Chrome, these are easily accessed from the Settings / Advanced Settings / Content Settings / All Cookies and Site Data menu.

This speedily restores the site and no need to pay.


lol just view it incognito.
You could also use Tor, which uses proxy servers to make you completely untraceable. Slightly unnecessary though.


Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by Imperial_Maniac
lol just view it incognito.


What exactly do you mean by "view it incognito"? It doesn't require a login initially, it just recognises when you've passed 20 page viewings in one month via the cookies.
Original post by Fullofsurprises
What exactly do you mean by "view it incognito"? It doesn't require a login initially, it just recognises when you've passed 20 page viewings in one month via the cookies.


Google chrome has an incognito mode (ctrl+shift+n) which means that history and cookies aren't recorded or registered, so paywalls don't work. Much easier than deleting your cookies every 5 minutes. I use it to read onion news stuff all the time.
Original post by Imperial_Maniac
Google chrome has an incognito mode (ctrl+shift+n) which means that history and cookies aren't recorded or registered, so paywalls don't work. Much easier than deleting your cookies every 5 minutes. I use it to read onion news stuff all the time.


Oh, that's useful to know about, thanks. :smile:

EDIT: I checked what you said about paywalls not working - the FT paywall still works when you are in incognito mode. It seems from the description that Incognito is to do with not leaving a trail in your browser, for example, when you want to do banking when you are in a public space or something like that, not to do with thwarting paywall cookies.
(edited 10 years ago)
Original post by Fullofsurprises
It seems from the description that Incognito is to do with not leaving a trail in your browser, for example, when you want to do banking when you are in a public space or something like that, not to do with thwarting paywall cookies.


I heard that some people use it if they want to look at naughty things.
Original post by InnerTemple
I heard that some people use it if they want to look at naughty things.


They do? Goodness! :eek:
Reply 18
Original post by Fullofsurprises
Does this method work on the Times/Financial Times I wonder?


You can view some - but not all - FT articles by copying the headline into Google and clicking in that way (the same way you can get around the NYT paywall). I'm not sure if there is a limit or if it is just some articles, but not all. The most popular (Lex) is behind a strict paywall as far as I can tell.

I will very happily be open to correction on that though! :cool:
How does one make the Googlebot thing work in Chrome? Anyone know?

Quick Reply

Latest