Internet Archive

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Internet Archive

Basic information
Founded	1996
Legal Structure	Non-profit
Industry	Archive, Library
Also known as
Official website	https://archive.org/

The Internet Archive is an American non-profit digital library founded in 1996 to provide free "universal access to all knowledge" and preserve digital history.

The archive can be a useful resource for consumers to access information about discontinued products, companies which are no longer operating, and articles which are removed from web sites.

Consumer impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the conduct towards users of the product (if applicable):

• User freedom
• User privacy
• Business model
• Market control

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Incidents

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Internet Archive category.

Archived website removal

Main article: Internet Archive/Blocked companies

The Archive accepts DMCA take-down requests of websites whose owners no longer want their sites archived, causing certain sites to be inaccessible.

The Internet Archive used to hide material covered by robots.txt restrictions but that was changed on 17 April 2017.

Login-only items for legally dubious content (2016—Present)

On 13 January 2016, Hank Bromley (hank_b) of the Internet Archive created a collection of uploads considered legally dubious and only viewable with an account.

These uploads cannot be viewed or downloaded by logged-out users but can be accessed by anyone with an account.

Removal of noindex function on uploaded items (2023)

In 2023 the Internet Archive reportedly removed the ability for users to use the noindex function, which used to result in the items being hidden from its internal search engine, while making the items whose noindex value is true to appear on the search engine. The decision was criticized on the grounds that it may jeopardize users' rights, including privacy. When confronted about it, Jason Scott, who was a staff member of the Internet Archive, reportedly responded with the following:

There is no bug or mistake in removing no-index settings for many Internet Archive items in the Community collection.

At no point was the Archive contacted to arrange a situation of no-indexing (or Darking) items with an intention of later release; the no-index setting was not documented for this use, and represented a security hole that was closed. Tens of thousands of items were found, being used for encrypted files hidden from the search engine, and represented a major problem, so many items have been removed or set noindex quickly.

A number of people have contacted us explaining situations where items might need to be made no-indexed, in a collection for later or timed release for example, but they've done it with communication and discussing their needs, not just uploading files under disposable accounts and then assuming the archive would keep them un-accessible in perpetuity. In some cases their requests have gotten arrangements so that community items that were noindex are noindex again, in separate collections.

A situation can theoretically exist where the original uploader can e-mail us from their e-mail address and discuss arrangements, but you've indicated you intentionally obfuscated your location and have disposed your addresses. If you're able to gain access again, you can mail through those addresses.

An additional situation is you can e-mail [email protected] if you want to report items at the archive (by identifier) that you believe might need to be removed from the archive; we receive a number of these requests throughout the months and respond according to policy.

The following pseudo-code was shared by a user who criticized the decision, if the Internet Archive decides to reinstate the ability for users to use the noindex function while re-hiding all the formerly noindexed items from the search engines:

noindex items if:

(

items-noindexed-by-user-in-the-past = true;

OR items-noindexed-by-IA-in-the-past = true);

AND (

items-get-reindexed-voluntarily-by-USER-before-May-2023 = false;

OR

items-get-reindexed-voluntarily-by-IA-before-May-2023 = false;

)

Data breaches (2012—2024)

On 19 May 2017, The Archive's Development Manager made a blog post detailing that anyone who had created their account before 2012 had to change their password as the site had been breached with user's public information and lightly encrypted passwords being leaked.

On 9 October 2024, users on the Internet Archive received pop-ups that the website had been hacked, with the notifications appearing from the perpetrators at around 9PM CST. An hour later, Troy Hunt of HaveIBeenPwned confirmed the breach.

Around 31 million users were affected with their user IDs, Emails, encrypted passwords and user names being leaked.

Website no longer usable without JavaScript (2023—Present)

Up until 2022, Archive.org was one of the few remaining major websites that could be browsed and searched without JavaScript. JavaScript was mostly only used for features that couldn't be implemented otherwise, such as for enabling bottomless scrolling. This is known as progressive enhancement.

Since 2023 however, large parts of the Archive.org website (including the home page, collection pages, and the search engine) can no longer be browsed at all without JavaScript, because the legacy HTML-based user interface was replaced with a Google Lit web app. As of April 2026, only individual item pages remain viewable without JavaScript.

This made it impossible to browse the site on legacy systems that do not support modern web browsers, as well as minimalist web browser alternatives to the Google-Mozilla duopoly, and slowed down loading on modern web browsers because lots of code has to be executed before any content can appear on screen, putting the content at the end of the rendering path.