Hacker News Reader

Comment by ufmace | Hacker News Reader

Could be an interesting article, anybody know how to read it? WSJ has been hiding the article text behind a paywall, and even Google doesn't seem to cache the full text.

View on HN

Yes, I just found out yesterday that setting your referrer to facebook.com/l.php allows you to reliably bypass the paywall.

E.g. http://facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.wsj.com/articles/poli...

Wow, I don't even have a facebook account and that works. That feels like some XSS waiting to happen :/

It's an open redirect, not XSS. It's a matter of debate whether an open redirect is a vulnerability or not.

Thanks, that does work. Though I still feel a little funny about jumping through a bunch of weird hoops to read news articles.

This trick is the only thing that seems to bypass WSJ paywall now

In case anyone's still here, I made a bookmarklet for it:

javascript:location.href='http://facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(location.hr...

Make a bookmark with that, call it I'm from Facebook or something, and go to it when you hit a paywall.

Archive.is usually works for WSJ articles: https://archive.fo/JWQvG

It's pretty simple, you just pay the WSJ for a subscription.

Madness. Next thing you know they stop putting out clickbaity titles, too. Then what are we going to do? Read the actual articles? Get real.

Make this a bookmark:

    javascript:location.href='https://www.google.com/webhp?%23q='%20+%20encodeURIComponent(location.href)%20+%20'&btnI=I'

Click it when on the page.

I already have that bookmark, and it doesn't work for WSJ anymore.

Odd. It worked for me on that very article, and two others I just tried. I wonder what's causing the difference.

The "web" link works for me. I know that it hasn't been working consistently, so YMMV.

The trick is do it on your mobile phone, or emulate an Android or iOS user agent string.

Tried web link, incognito mode, user agent spoofer, and my Android phone, none of them work. Thanks for trying, but I gotta flag this article. I don't support paywalled content being on HN.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com