{"id":3488624,"date":"2026-03-23T19:08:45","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/23\/russian-officials-prohibit-access-to-the-paywall-bypassing-website-archive-today\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T19:08:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:08:45","slug":"russian-officials-prohibit-access-to-the-paywall-bypassing-website-archive-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/23\/russian-officials-prohibit-access-to-the-paywall-bypassing-website-archive-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian officials prohibit access to the paywall bypassing website Archive.today"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/russian-officials-prohibit-access-to-the-paywall-bypassing-website-archive-today.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The site Archive.today, known for bypassing paywalls, along with several related domains (such as .is and .ph), has been restricted by Russian authorities, as indicated by the error messages encountered when trying to access its sites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The blocks were evident as of Monday when TechCrunch accessed the sites from the Eastern U.S.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A message in Russian stated: \u201cAccess to the Internet resource Blocked by decision of the public authorities,\u201d referencing the government body tasked with internet regulation, Roskomnadzor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As per Roskomnadzor\u2019s record for Archive.is, officials indicated that \u201caccess is limited to the page,\u201d but did not provide a reason at the time of reporting. At the time TechCrunch checked, Archive.today was not listed as blocked.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A Roskomnadzor representative did not promptly reply to TechCrunch\u2019s questions outside of Moscow\u2019s working hours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">TechCrunch was still able to access the Archive sites through various devices and networks, and successfully archived a web page despite the apparent restrictions. The extent of the block and the party responsible for its implementation remain unclear.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Archive.today is a prominent site for saving copies of web pages, including those typically obscured by paywalls or subscription logins. Wikipedia editors recently opted to eliminate hundreds of thousands of links to Archive.today, alleging that it uses users\u2019 web browsers\u2014without their consent\u2014to inundate the website of a blogger critical of its practices with excessive network traffic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The operators of Archive.today have not responded to requests for comments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>(h\/t <\/em>Ryan O\u2019Horo on Bluesky<em>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/russian-officials-prohibit-access-to-the-paywall-bypassing-website-archive-today.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The site Archive.today, known for bypassing paywalls, along with several related domains (such as .is and .ph), has been restricted by Russian authorities, as indicated by the error messages encountered when trying to access its sites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The blocks were evident as of Monday when TechCrunch accessed the sites from the Eastern U.S.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A message in Russian stated: \u201cAccess to the Internet resource Blocked by decision of the public authorities,\u201d referencing the government body tasked with internet regulation, Roskomnadzor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As per Roskomnadzor\u2019s record for Archive.is, officials indicated that \u201caccess is limited to the page,\u201d but did not provide a reason at the time of reporting. At the time TechCrunch checked, Archive.today was not listed as blocked.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A Roskomnadzor representative did not promptly reply to TechCrunch\u2019s questions outside of Moscow\u2019s working hours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">TechCrunch was still able to access the Archive sites through various devices and networks, and successfully archived a web page despite the apparent restrictions. The extent of the block and the party responsible for its implementation remain unclear.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Archive.today is a prominent site for saving copies of web pages, including those typically obscured by paywalls or subscription logins. Wikipedia editors recently opted to eliminate hundreds of thousands of links to Archive.today, alleging that it uses users\u2019 web browsers\u2014without their consent\u2014to inundate the website of a blogger critical of its practices with excessive network traffic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The operators of Archive.today have not responded to requests for comments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>(h\/t <\/em>Ryan O\u2019Horo on Bluesky<em>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3488625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3488624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3488624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3488625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3488624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3488624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3488624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}