Are you blocked when you click through? Usually external links don't count against the number of articles you can read, unless they changed that recently.
I've invested in a private/confidential VPN service. They may be tracking by IP address, and VPN is a good way to thwart it. It comes in handy alllllll the time, only ~$20/year.
I use Private Internet Access... and I just lol'd at mugshot of the little girl riding a bike, wtf? So far it's been pretty nice. Every now and then a node goes down for a bit, but they have servers in several regions of the U.S. and Europe, you can choose where you'd like your IP to be from. It's nice for when you come across content that is blocked in a specific region too, because fuck that shit. Apparently it's $40/year, but I uhh... well, I save money in other ways by using this service (and I can seed as well).