The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has launched a probe to find the person or group behind the widely used archiving website Archive.today, and its alternate domains like Archive.is and Archive.ph.
Operating since 2012, the site creates snapshots of web pages, a feature generally used to bypass news paywalls or save content like government documents. While similar to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, Archive.today‘s owner remains a mystery; meanwhile, the original domain links to Denis Petrov in Prague, Czech Republic, widely believed to be a fake name.
The creator is thought to be a single person, possibly Russian, with ties to Europe (suggested by language clues and donation requests in euros). Even today, very little is known about the people who run the site, which has saved hundreds of millions of web pages over the years.
Federal Subpoena Details
The investigation came to light when the official Archive.today‘s X (formerly Twitter) account posted a copy of an FBI subpoena, dated October 30th. For your information, a subpoena is a legal order that forces someone to hand over documents or information.
This subpoena, first reported by the German news site Heise Online and then detailed by 404 Media, was sent to the Canadian domain registration company, Tucows, demanding extensive information about the site’s owner.
The subpoena is, reportedly, seeking the “customer or subscriber name, address of service, and billing address,” along with detailed records of the owner’s phone calls, payment information, internet session logs, and even any associated cloud computing services.
The document states that all this information is needed for a “federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI.” Interestingly, the document does not name any crime. The order specifically requested that Tucows keep the investigation secret, but the document was quickly posted online by Archive.today.
“You are requested not to disclose the existence of this subpoena indefinitely, as any such disclosure could interfere with an ongoing investigation and enforcement of the law,” the order stated.
It is worth noting that this action follows a similar crackdown in the publishing industry. Earlier this year, in July, the News/Media Alliance successfully got another paywall-skirting site, 12ft.io, taken down, claiming it offered “illegal circumvention technology” to access copyrighted content without paying.
Tucows has confirmed that they comply with valid legal processes like this subpoena, giving the FBI a deadline of November 29th to furnish the records. This development has made the question of who is truly behind Archive.today a highly debated topic online today.
Hackread.com has reached out to the Archive.ph team for comment.
