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by vitalus 4069 days ago
Behind a paywall :(
1 comments

google the headline to get a direct link!
Note: this trick doesn't work in Firefox now that Google defaults to https. Firefox won't send a Referer header when you're going from an https page to an http page, so wsj.com doesn't know you're coming from Google. (I don't know whether it sends one for https-to-https cross-domain links.)

Ninja edit: that is, this is how my Firefox behaves. Not sure if it's caused by an add-on like HTTP Everywhere or something like that. But it seems like I read something from the DuckDuckGo blog describing this behavior.

Chrome sends a Referer of "https://www.google.com" (i.e. just the domain), so wsj.com lets you past the paywall.

Even better, just type "site:" and paste the url into google/your chrome location bar after it [1]. The only result you'll receive is the link.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj....

Interesting, Binging the headline doesn't work, but googling does.
I believe there are browser extensions that let you configure referrer on per site basis. Hence for WSJ if you set google, it would bypass paywall.
Once the page is indexed a simple cache: in front of the URL in Chrome might work.