How to see Blocked Content on Websites

17.8K Every once in a while, you come across websites that are members-only. Some popular examples would be The Atlantic, Quora, Financial Times, etc. They offer some content for free, but if you browse more, then you get a pop-up asking you to create a free account or pay to read more content. And of course, as you can see, there is no option to close that pop-up. Now, there’s no problem in returning value to the publisher by paying or creating an account. But let’s say, I need quick information and don’t have any plan to revisit the website in the future, then there is no point in becoming a pro member. Right? So here are some quick ways to browse blocked content on websites.

See blocked content on Websites

1. Remove pop-up using Inspect Elements

This trick works fine on general websites that force sign-up and hide content. For instance, let’s take Quora- a popular question-answer website. It offers content to its members only. If you come to this site from Google and try to read more than one page, a pop-up will appear asking you to sign-up. Now to bypass it, follow the steps: Step 1: On the Quora webpage which displays the pop-up, right-click on the page and click on “Inspect“. Step 2: On the Inspect element page, move your cursor to the pop-up window and the code in the inspect element gets highlighted. Once you fetch it, delete that line of code. At times, there are multiple transparent layers on the page’s body, that makes the links unresponsive. Delete those lines of code as well. Once done you can read the content without sign-up. If you accidentally delete other elements like a picture or something then refresh the page to start again.

2. Use proxies 

What if I am using a smartphone? Mobile browsers don’t have the option to search the Inspect element. Hence, the above workaround won’t work. To overcome this issue, you can use proxy services like Google Translate. It doesn’t work as well as inspect element but still work-able. Foremost, copy-paste the URL of the website you want to read. Head over to the Google Translate page, paste the Atlantic URL. In case, the language isn’t auto-detected, set it to “English“. Next, tap on the translated URL link and it’ll open in a new tab ready for you to read. In case Google Translate doesn’t work for you, you can try other proxy websites like HideMe, Hidester, etc. These methods don’t work on certain websites like Quora. For that, you can use the following method.

3. Internet Archive

Internet Archive is a digital library of the Internet. It, literally archives websites and stores their copy. In case the above methods don’t work for you, Internet Archive will mostly work. Foremost, copy the URL of the said website. Next, paste it on the search URL on the Internet Archive webpage and hit Enter. After some time, the Internet Archive will load the snapshots of the page on a calendar. Navigate and check for the day of the snapshot. For instance, in my case, it is on November 25, 2020. Mostly, the snapshot will be around the publishing date of the article. A blue dot represents it. I can hover over the date and check the time of the snapshot. You can click on the latest snapshot and the Internet Archive will load the article. The article will load under Internet Archive and will have the same interface like the original article. Note, that this is a snapshot of the article and in case, the article has been updated in less than a day, you might see an older version of the article.

4. Revisit the website from Google

Another quick way to bypass the paywall is via Google. For instance, News websites like Financial Times, The Atlantic allow visitors from Google to browse the page for free, which would otherwise require sign-up. They do this to make sure that the website receives traffic from Google while also making money from regular visitors. To visit the website via Google, copy-paste the title of the article on Google search appended by the website name. Click on the first link > you will be brought to the same page but without a pop-up. You can repeat this, as many times you want. The website will assume that you have come from Google and thus display the content. Conclusion So we have seen some loopholes, that allow us to see blocked content on websites. I tend to use Internet Archive often as it works mostly. Now, I use this with websites that are not new and don’t post often. In case you pay for your content, you should check out Scroll. It’s a one-stop paywall that lets you access content of most of the popular websites. For more issues or queries, let me know in the comments below. Also Read: How to Block Websites on Chrome Browser on Android