Internet Archive
| Basic information | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1996 |
| Legal structure | Private |
| Industry | Digital Library |
| 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.
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Consumer-impact summary
[TBA]
Incidents
Login-only items for legally dubious content (2016-present)
On January 13th of 2016 Hank Bromley (hank_b) of the Internet Archive made a collection for uploads considered legally dubious and only viewable with an account. [1]
These uploads cannot be viewed by users logged out and cannot be downloaded by anyone outside of the admins making any of these pieces of content inaccessible. [2]
Archived Website Censorship
IA Retroactively removes (hides) material covered by robots.txt restrictions (They may have stopped doing this - also don't confuse this for the criteria for actually saving/archiving a page, I am talking about end user access to saved/archived content).
Data Breaches (2012-2024)
On May 19th of 2017 The Archive's Development Manager Katie Barrett made a blog post detailing that anyone who'd made their accounts before 2012 had to change their passwords as the site had been breached with user's public information and lightly encrypted passwords being leaked. [3]
On October 9th of 2024 users on the Internet Archive get pop-ups that the website had been hacked with notifications appearing from the perpetrators at around 9PM CST [4], and an hour later Troy Hunt of HaveIBeenPwned would confirm the breach. [5]
Around 31 Million Users were affected with their User IDs, Emails, Encrypted Passwords and Usernames being leaked in it. [6]
References
- ↑ "Download & Streaming : Log In Required : Internet Archive". Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16. Retrieved 2025-08-16.
- ↑ "Internet Archive Forums: Log In Required, after logging in". Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16. Retrieved 2025-08-16.
- ↑ Barrett, Katie (2017-05-19). "Re: User account breach | Internet Archive Blogs". Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 2025-05-20. Retrieved 2025-08-16.
- ↑ "Dark Web Informer on X: "🚨🚨🚨The Wayback Machine looks like it has been compromised. web[.]archive[.]org https://t.co/MvPshUrs7i" / X". Twitter. 2024-10-09. Archived from the original on 2024-10-12. Retrieved 2025-08-16.
{{cite web}}: External link in|title=|title=at position 84 (help) - ↑ Hunt, Troy (2024-10-09). "Troy Hunt on X: "Hi folks, yes, I'm aware of this. I've been in communication with the Internet Archive over the last few days re the data breach, didn't know the site was defaced until people started flagging it with me just now. More soon." / X". Twitter. Archived from the original on 2024-08-10. Retrieved 2025-08-16.
- ↑ LeClair, Dave (2024-10-11). ""31 million users impacted by Internet Archive data breach — what we know"". Tom's Guide. Archived from the original on 2024-11-09. Retrieved 2025-08-16.