12ft.io is a website that allows users to selectively browse any site with JavaScript disabled. It also allows some online paywalls to be bypassed. It is currently owned by its creator Thomas Millar.[1]
Type of site | No JavaScript proxy browser |
|---|---|
| Owner | Thomas Millar |
| URL | 12ft |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | No |
In November 2023, its hosting platform Vercel took the website offline. It was back online the following month.[2]
Blocking
editSome websites have blocked 12ft, such as Bloomberg, The New York Times and The Athletic.[citation needed]
Function
editThe website's name is based on the phrase "show me a 10 foot wall and I'll show you a 12 foot ladder." It bypasses paywalls by pretending to be a search engine crawler when requesting a webpage.[3]
Outage history
editOn August 31, 2022, the site was offline, with the hosting provider displaying the error message of "DEPLOYMENT DISABLED" and the HTTP 451 status code, meaning "Unavailable For Legal Reasons".[4][better source needed] The site came back online on September 1st, but was disabled again on September 10th. The site was available again as of September 11th, but was no longer showing cached versions of pages for NYTimes.com, instead displaying a message of "12ft has been disabled for this site".[5] On July 30, 2023, the site's security certificate appeared to be invalid. The certificate in question was issued by Cisco Umbrella Secondary SubCA lax-SG with an expiration date of August 3rd.
On November 2, 2023, the site only displayed an error 402 with a message "402: Payment Required. This Deployment has been disabled. Your connection is working correctly. Vercel is working correctly." Thomas Millar announced that provider Vercel had removed his account access. Vercel stated this was because 12ft broke their Terms of Service.[6] As of November 19, 2023, the site is up and running, and seems to be hosted on a new provider.
Alternatives
editAlternatives to 12ft include:[7]
- Private browsing for some websites, though often with access limits
- Through a virtual private network, the Tor network or a proxy server
- Several browser extensions[8][9]
- Several archive sites, including Internet Archive and archive.today
- Several web content converters, including txtify.it[10] and PrintFriendly[11]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Martin, Alexander. "Paywall-breaking tool 12ft asks users to subscribe to cover costs". Sky News. Retrieved 2022-04-08.
- ^ Shah, Saqib (2023-12-04). "What is 12ft Ladder?: popular paywall-bypassing site back online". Evening Standard. Retrieved 2023-12-06.
- ^ Guaglione, Sara (25 August 2023). "Publishers still find it challenging to measure readers bypassing their paywalls". Digiday.
- ^ "451: DEPLOYMENT_DISABLED". 12ft.io. Archived from the original on 31 August 2022. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
This Deployment has been disabled. Your connection is working correctly. Vercel is working correctly.
- ^ "12ft has been disabled for this site". 12ft.io. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
- ^ "12ft is down, @vercel banned me". X. Retrieved 2023-10-30.
- ^ "15 Free Ways to Get Around Paywalls". All About Cookies. 9 June 2023.
- ^ "12ft Ladder Alternatives". AlternativeTo.
- ^ "5 Best Chrome extensions to bypass a paywall". Bardeen.ai.
- ^ "txtify.it". txtify.it.
- ^ "PrintFriendly".
External links
edit
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