OT: on paywalls

I have four browsers installed, which can be handy...

(Firefox, Safari, IE, Chrome, Opera - IIRC)

Is that a subtle dig at IE or just dubious arithmetic?

As it happens, a simple mistake! I forgot about Opera, then neglected to

Today someone who is not exactly the most technically aware person I have come across was saying how nice to was that they now had a spelling checker on a web-site (a forum). I had to explain that she had just applied a Windows updated including IE10. And that, at last, IE now has a built-in spelling checker. So it is arguably not quite as bad as it was a few days ago. But I still only use it for things like testing web-sites. :-)

Surely cookies are _your_ property so you can do whatever you like with them...

That's not something I'd have noticed, as I have Firefox set to delete most cookies on closedown.

Doesn't always work. However, for some 'news' sites, copying the headline into Google News, searching and clicking the link will take you to the article sans paywall.

Theo

Very few sites are allowed to set more than a session cookie on my machines, so a quick browser re-start achieves the same result, and usually frees up a few hundred MB of RAM into the bargain.

One of my pet hates is Google News headlines that take you straight to a pay page. I wish Google News had some way of telling it to exclude specified sites from its results.

Yes, I use better privacy and the adblock plus in FF, and simple ad block in IE, the early one without the restriction before payment. Some sites are getting canny though and noting that you need to turn off the anti add device before they will let you in. Brian

The Natural Philosopher posted

Some news websites rely on Javascript to block non-subscribers' access, so all you have to do to read them to your heart's content is turn off JS in your browser.

well yes, but this was a specific comment on paywalls that count your accesses from a particular browser.

I subscribe to the FT, they have a different process. Some content is paywalled, other is not. You need a valid cookie to get to the paywalled content. If you delete it then you have to log in again.