- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
Around January 11, 2026, archive.today (aka archive.is, archive.md, etc) started using its users as proxies to conduct a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against Gyrovague, my personal blog. All users encountering archive.today’s CAPTCHA page currently load and execute the following Javascript:
Posting this here since the dispute was started over a PII concern.
Link to a post a while back about archive.is (and other archive.* sites) sending data to Russia. Post discusses this article
The linked article is nothing more than incompetent, bad-faith fearmongering. It has already been debunked in this comment. Long story short: literally every request mentioned in this article is blocked by any ad blocker with default settings, which you should be using anyway.
Fair enough, it wasn’t very good. But rn it seems like I (and also the writers of that article) was proven right to be leery of archive.xx
Any info that goes to any Russian website these days can be considered going straight to the government, and therefore harmful, fueling their hybrid war.
Without explicitely using a Russian or Russia-related website.
In your linked, older comment you repeatedly state that it’s only trackers and counters, but you should also mention that each time this happens a visitor’s IP (and most likely full browser profile) is stored somewhere along the article they clicked on. People do not necessarily know this.
Thanks very much for the link. Appreciate your research and explanation. Always grateful to learn from others. Have a PiHole and use uBlock. Thanks again.
Victim blaming may not be the answer you think it is.