Yes, it is! With just a simple dot!



It all began with a Reddit thread [1], in which visitors spoke about a strange bug in The New York Times paywall:

Bypass the New York Times article paywall WITHOUT addons by adding a period (.) after ".com" and before the slash (/)

Well, few weeks later, participants in the discussion discovers that this "bug" affects a lot of sites with ads, including YouTube videos.

This is a hilarious bug. Every domain name ends in a dot, but it's hidden by default on almost everything. The browser only makes a request for everything after the slash. What must be happening is a client-side script is comparing the url in the browser to a list of paywalled pages and because it's not an exact match, it just lets it though

The problem will probably be corrected soon but, in the meantime, enjoy an ads-free web!

References

  1. Bypass the New York Times article paywall WITHOUT addons by adding a period (.) after ".com" and before the slash (/) : Piracy