12ft
Type of site | No JavaScript proxy browser |
|---|---|
| Owner | Thomas Millar |
| URL | 12ft |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | No |
12 ft.io was a website that allowed users to selectively browse any site with JavaScript disabled. It also allowed some online paywalls to be bypassed.[1] It was owned by its creator Thomas Millar.[2]
In November 2023, its hosting platform Vercel took the website offline. It was back online the following month. On July 17, 2025, the News Media Alliance reported that it had taken down the website.
Blocking
Some websites had blocked 12 ft, such as Bloomberg and The New York Times.[3]
Function
The website's name is based on the phrase "show me a 10 foot wall and I'll show you a 12 foot ladder."[4][1] It bypassed paywalls by pretending to be a search engine crawler when requesting a webpage.[5]
Outage history
On August 31, 2022, the site was offline, with the hosting provider displaying a "DEPLOYMENT DISABLED" message and returning an HTTP 451 status code.[6] The site came back online on September 1, but was disabled again on September 10. The site was available again as of September 11, but was no longer showing cached versions of pages for NYTimes.com, instead displaying a message of "12ft has been disabled for this site".[3] 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 3.
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 on X that provider Vercel had removed his account access,[7] and Vercel's CEO quickly replied that this was because they had broken their Terms of Service.[8] It was back online the following month.[9]
On July 17, 2025, the News Media Alliance reported that it had taken down the website.[10][4]
Data from UpDownToday show that 12ft.io was last recorded as available on March 27, 2024, and last recorded as down on December 11, 2025; as of March 4, 2026, the domain was listed as returning a 404 status code.[11]
See also
- Bypass Paywalls Clean – Browser extension to circumvent paywalls
- Open Access Button – Browser bookmarklet
- Unpaywall – Nonprofit organization
References
- ^ a b "12ft – Hop any paywall". 12ft.io. Archived from the original on January 31, 2021. Retrieved October 8, 2025.
- ^ Martin, Alexander. "Paywall-breaking tool 12ft asks users to subscribe to cover costs". Sky News. Archived from the original on July 20, 2025. Retrieved April 8, 2022.
- ^ a b "12ft has been disabled for this site". 12ft.io. Archived from the original on October 26, 2023. Retrieved June 1, 2023.
- ^ a b Schultz, Ray (July 17, 2025). "Commentary: The Crumbling Bypass: Alliance Brings Down Paywall Avoidance Site". MediaPost. Publishing Insider. Archived from the original on August 5, 2025.
- ^ Guaglione, Sara (August 25, 2023). "Publishers still find it challenging to measure readers bypassing their paywalls". Digiday.
- ^ "451: DEPLOYMENT_DISABLED". 12ft.io. Archived from the original on August 31, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
This Deployment has been disabled. Your connection is working correctly. Vercel is working correctly.
- ^ "12ft is down, @vercel banned me". X. Retrieved October 30, 2023.
12ft is down, @vercel banned me / No warning on a Friday night, while I was on vacation. / Worst yet, they took down all my projects and confiscated all my domains. / No response from support.
- ^ "Vercel CEO reply". X. Retrieved August 11, 2025.
Hey Thomas. Your paywall-bypassing site broke our ToS and created hundreds of hours of support time spent on all the outreach from the impacted businesses. / Our support team reached out to you on Oct 14th to let you know this was unsustainable and to try to work with you.
- ^ Shah, Saqib (December 4, 2023). "What is 12ft Ladder?: popular paywall-bypassing site back online". Evening Standard. Retrieved December 6, 2023.
- ^
- Roth, Emma (July 17, 2025). "News publishers take paywall-blocker 12ft.io offline". The Verge. Archived from the original on September 3, 2025. Retrieved July 17, 2025.
- "News Publishers Take Paywall-Blocker 12ft.io Offline". Slashdot. July 17, 2025. Retrieved September 9, 2025.
- ^ "12ft.io — outages, problems and current status". UpDownToday. Retrieved February 11, 2026.