Why Wikipedia has blacklisted Archive.today links
22 Feb 2026

Wikipedia editors have reached a consensus to remove all links to Archive.today, a popular web archiving service.

The decision comes after the site was linked over 695,000 times in the online encyclopedia.

Archive.today, which also goes by archive.is and archive.ph, is often used to access paywalled content and has been a source for Wikipedia citations.

Archive.today links removed after discussion among editors
Policy change

The decision to remove links to Archive.today was reached after a discussion among Wikipedia editors.

The consensus was, "Wikipedia should not direct its readers toward a website that hijacks users' computers to run a DDoS attack."

There were also claims that the operators of Archive.today have manipulated archived pages, making them unreliable.

DDoS attack targeted blogger Jani Patokallio
Attack details

The alleged DDoS attack was reportedly targeted at blogger Jani Patokallio.

He claimed that since January 11, users opening the archive's CAPTCHA page have been unknowingly executing JavaScript sending a search query to his Gyrovague blog.

This was apparently an attempt to draw Patokallio's attention and increase his hosting expenses.

Archive.today's ownership is 'an opaque mystery'
Ownership mystery

In 2023, Patokallio had published a blog post on Archive.today, whose ownership he described as "an opaque mystery."

He couldn't find a specific owner but deduced that the site was probably "a one-person labor of love, operated by a Russian of considerable talent and access to Europe."

The webmaster at Archive.today later requested him to take down his post for two or three months.

Site claimed value to Wikipedia was 'not about paywalls'
Webmaster's statement

The webmaster at Archive.today responded to Patokallio's refusal with "an increasingly unhinged series of threats."

On a blog linked from the Archive.today website, the apparent owner wrote that their site's value to Wikipedia was "not about paywalls" but rather "the ability to offload copyright issues."

They later said things had turned out "pretty well" and would scale down the 'DDoS.'