How To Bypass The Australian’s Paywall

Earlier this week, The Australian added a paywall to its site which means you can’t read most articles without a paid subscription. While there’s a three-month trial, it’s relatively easy to work around the paywall if you want to just get to a single article.

Austech Forums points out that you can use a similar technique to that seen with other overseas sites: grab the headline and search for it on Google News, and you’ll get an unprotected version. Most news sites want people to be able to find their articles via Google, so an unprotected version is available via this method.

The Australian sets a cookie which limits how often you can view articles using that approach. As Austech also notes, you can edit your cookies and remove those relating to the Australian to reset the counter, though we’d argue that if you need to do that with any regularity you should look into buying a subscription anyway. Hit the Austech link for a more detailed walkthrough.

Sidestep the Australian’s paywall [Austech Forums]