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Simple hack yields free Times Web content outside UK

Security through obscurity fails again

I don't normally read Establishment gazettes like the London Times or the Sunday Times, but whilst trawling the Web yesterday I spotted a link to a story which I thought might interest me. Imagine my disappointment when I attempted to access it and learned that only those Netizens located in the UK are permitted to read the Times for free.

Of course I was cordially invited to register and pay a subscription fee; but I didn't want a subscription -- I merely wanted to look at a single item. To me, £39.99 (about US $56.00) seemed an awfully steep price for the privilege of reading one lousy story.

So I decided to bamboozle the Times' electronic customs inspector if I could. That took all of ten minutes to accomplish, as the first (and easiest) workaround that occurred to me succeeded. They didn't even try to make a challenge of it. Essentially, I took a virtual trip to England courtesy of the Web: I merely resolved a list that I keep of working proxies to domains so I could see which ones were located in the UK. As soon as I spotted one, I entered it into my browser and then registered with the Times (using fictional personal data, naturally).

I was prepared for a struggle; but sadly, that's all it takes. And if your favourite UK proxy is slow, don't worry; you won't need it again. Just use it while you're registering. Once that's done, it makes no difference where you surf in from afterwards. The whole trick consists simply of having a UK domain showing in your http header while you're setting up an account. Once that's done, your user-name and password will 'clear' you for free access thereafter.

It's amusing to see a company getting clever with IP, trying to erect the virtual equivalent of a national frontier on the Web to exact a toll from hapless foreigners. The sheer stupidity of this effort is illuminated nicely by the sheer ease with which it's defeated. Did no one tell them that the Internet simply isn't built that way?

I do hope the Times is a good deal more diligent with the credit card data they collect from subscribers. But after seeing their 'security' scheme to lock out overseas freeloaders and protect their own revenues, I don't imagine I'll be trusting them with my CC data any time soon. ®

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