Thread by @realjusthuman

o.O

https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1984093883056422993

FBI wants all the subscriber info for the website archive.today

Hmm, I wonder what the FBI's interests are with the owner/operator of an archive website.

Copyright infringements?
Botnets for hire?
Something else?

"In 2023, Finnish blogger Janni Patokallio compiled various clues and research results in a post. According to this, uses a botnet with changing IP addresses to circumvent anti-scraping measures. There are also indications that the operator(s) are based in Russia."Archive.today

"The first historical record we have of the site dates from May 16, 2012, when a “Denis Petrov” from Prague, Czech Republic registered the domain , the original name of the site."

Likely an alias. archive.is

"The one intriguing bit of evidence we have is this series of screenshots (archive) where Brave’s tech support addresses [e-mail] as “Denis”, but odds are that’s just from the same DNS record."

Checking the site's FAQ "the author’s English is excellent but not quite native, with occasional Noun Capitalization also hinting at a German background. Yet they answer questions in Russian, and the site uses a Russian analytics engine."

“Masha Rabinovich”

"Early Github captures on archive.today are linked to a now completely disappeared account called “volth” (copy archived by archive.today itself), who was a fluent speaker of Russian, contributed extensively to NixOS (which archive.today uses) and has a profile picture not dissimilar to Masha’s."

"PayPal donations, previously accepted, were switched off around 2022 since the creator could no longer top up the account, implying they’re in Russia, and they complain about the difficulty of doing cross-border payments “across the Iron Curtain”."

Indications are that is "a one-person labor of love, operated by a Russian of considerable talent and access to Europe." archive.today

"Another private investigation from 2024 comes to a different conclusion. It names a software developer from New York as the alleged operator. According to this investigation, following the trail to Eastern Europe proved to be a red herring."

Tucows will likely comply with the subpoena.

I've used that site almost daily, often multiple times per day, for years.

It's a top ten site for me. Indispensable.

But now, the main .today site, all its redirects, and all the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of archived pages... are down.

Forever lost, like tears in rain.

Links

Archive.today: FBI Demands Data from Provider Tucows
heise.de/en/news/Archiv…

FBI orders domain registrar to reveal who runs mysterious Archive.is site
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

archive.today: On the trail of the mysterious guerrilla archivist of the Internet
gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/arc…