In a nutshell: Founded in 2012, Archive.today has offered an alternative to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for saving permanent snapshots of web pages. The controversial service, often used to bypass paywalls, is now the focus of an FBI investigation seeking full details on its ownership and online activity.
Archive.today recently revealed a subpoena showing that the FBI is seeking the website's owner. The bureau asked Tucows, a Canadian company and one of the world's largest domain registrars, to provide extensive information on the anonymous customer behind the web snapshotting service and all its aliases, including the owner's name, address, billing details, phone activity, credit card or bank accounts, internet sessions, and other related records.
The FBI says the data is needed in an ongoing criminal investigation, though it has not provided details about the broad probe. The bureau also instructed Tucows not to disclose the subpoena, which could have interfered with the investigation. Archive.today sidestepped the issue by publicly revealing the subpoena itself. It is unclear how it obtained a copy of the PDF document.
A Tucows spokesperson said the company typically complies with legitimate law enforcement requests. However, the Canadian registrar declined to comment on ongoing investigations. Based on available information, Tucows could have already provided the FBI with all the requested data.
Archive.today operates under the domain names Archive.is and Archive.ph. The service caches entire websites or individual pages on demand and can capture JavaScript-heavy sites, providing users with both a fully functional page and a static image.
The website hosts hundreds of millions of web pages and is widely used to bypass paywalls. It was also involved in the infamous Gamergate case, a misogynistic harassment campaign that used Archive.today to capture pages and divert traffic from the original sites.
So far, the owner of Archive.today has remained anonymous. Clues from old blog posts suggest the administrator may be a tech-savvy Russian citizen with access to European resources. The site's FAQ page states that Archive.today is privately funded, with no "complex" financial operations behind it.
FBI is investigating the shadowy owner of web snapshot service Archive.today
