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The Wayback Machine is Deleting Evidence of Malware Sold To Stalkers (vice.com)
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine is a service that preserves web pages. But the site has been deleting evidence of companies selling malware to illegally spy on spouses, Motherboard reported Tuesday. From the report: The company in question is FlexiSpy, a Thailand-based firm which offers desktop and mobile malware. The spyware can intercept phone calls, remotely turn on a device's microphone and camera, steal emails and social media messages, as well as track a target's GPS location. Previously, pages from FlexiSpy's website saved to the Wayback Machine showed a customer survey, with over 50 percent of respondents saying they were interested in a spy phone product because they believe their partner may be cheating. That particular graphic was mentioned in a recent New York Times piece on the consumer spyware market.
In another example, a Wayback Machine archive of FlexiSpy's homepage showed one of the company's catchphrases: "Many spouses cheat. They all use cell phones. Their cell phone will tell you what they won't." Now, those pages are no longer on the Wayback Machine. Instead, when trying to view seemingly any page from FlexiSpy's domain on the archiving service, the page reads "This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine."
In another example, a Wayback Machine archive of FlexiSpy's homepage showed one of the company's catchphrases: "Many spouses cheat. They all use cell phones. Their cell phone will tell you what they won't." Now, those pages are no longer on the Wayback Machine. Instead, when trying to view seemingly any page from FlexiSpy's domain on the archiving service, the page reads "This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine."
Thatâ(TM)s a shame.
The Wayback Machine obeys robots.txt, even retroactively. If a site puts up a robots.txt file, archive.org will remove old versions of the site.
with robot.txt i read that this causes wayback to remove *all* previous references to site. Correct me if i'm wrong :)
Don't like a webpage archived by IA? Just buy the domain and reactivate it, removing IA's archive!
What a fantastic bunch of historians!
See https://archive.org/about/faqs...
If you want to delete your site from the wayback machine, all you have to do is ask them. They are not obligated to keep any page in the archive, whether it contains "evidence" or not. You can also exclude ia_archiver user agent in your robots.txt, which will prevent your site from being indexed in the first place. This way you will not even have to ask them.
It wasnt malware, in the American language it would be called something like a "analytics's and management platform, with realtime reporting and active asset monitoring and protection"
And So It Begins!
It is very annoying, but that's how it works. The worst is when a site that is owned by an entity who goes out of business is preserved by the wayback machine, but then another entity gets the domain, puts up a robots.txt and there goes all the history.
For all the good it is doing, it would be so much better if it did not apply robots.txt retroactively. It doesn't even make sense, robots.txt says "bots stay out", which is not nearly the same as "bots, forget whatever you had visited in the past"...
I guess legally separated couples might be an exception but seriously, how do you "stalk" someone you are already married to? It wouldn't even rate "stalking" if you were just checking up on someone you were dating to see if they were being loyal. As a married couple you'd generally own whatever device you are putting malware on and at worst have a definite legal claim to ownership until the spouse proved you didn't contribute financially directly or indirectly to them being able to have that device.
Thanks to tinder and the like has cheating really become pervasive enough that public opinion sides with finding excuses to stop something that really does nothing more than make it harder to cheat?
As already commented in this thread and in other previous ones, the Wayback Machine reacts to robots.txt restrictions by deleting all the records retroactively. Even though I might personally prefer a different behaviour, this is undoubtedly a very honest approach: deleting all the collected information after the first indication that the given site/person might not want it! Quite a few sites should learn something from them.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I guess they deserve "the right to be forgotten", or did they misunderstand the concept?
But hey, going back in time to selectively erase those appearances, what a brilliant idea. My spouse was cheating back then -- she is now my ex. Or could her inappropriate behavior be taken back as well?
Or should I wait for robots.txt 2-point-oh?
Your description is missing the "cloud" buzzword. Advertising fail!
So if I want to check if my partner is a cheater I'm a stalker now? Fascinating.
Great, now all we need is a Wayback Wayback Machine Machine!
Then they need to quit running an archive.
If you think your partner is cheating isn't that enough to end the relationship? Why go to the effort of obtaining proof?
If you find out your partner isn't cheating, how does that resolve the feelings that made you suspect infidelity in the first place?
Their archive of a reddit thread where reddit user stonetear posted the private keys for the VPN he was working on and asking for some help troubleshooting.
even after the domain owner's insolvency
Don't sell the domain?
Domains expire even if not sold. Once a domain has expired, someone else can register it and park it with robots.txt.
Make your own copy of the html documents in question and publish them elsewhere? Publish a copy from the backups you kept?
What sort of "elsewhere" would you recommend?
I think they can do whatever the hell they want! They archived it, it's their data now.
Dear APK,
We need you now. We need you more than ever.
Various threats are assembling and the world has become a dangerous place. You, being what you are, have the remarkable potential to slow down or even reverse the machinations of the evil that is, quite literally, invading the (Western) world.
We need your HOST FILE ENGINE (2.0)! APK, hear me, I summon you!
It's very good that they find malicious sites that do illegal surveillance of people and that the main thing is that even if they delete these sites from the Internet, Google will download all the sites to the archive in order to later prove it is not right. I'm glad that at least someone is following the order. Just recently I knew that the guys from PaperCheap writes a good essay very cheap. They can help you anytime)
Is there one?
If you want to preserve evidence, use a site dedicated to preserving evidence. The Internet Archive doesn't aim to do that. As much as they would want to, they also cannot archive everything forever. I can understand that they wouldn't want to host advertisements for illegal or unethical services. As others have remarked, they also honor removal requests by site owners. This is a stupid piece of non-news.
works for just about anything