A translation of this article with a few (minor additions). I could not find an English-language article. The original article has informative illustrations.
“Archive.Today” is a popular website for access to paid media content. Well-known domain names for the website are archive.is and archive.ph (and archive.md, archive.fo, archive.li, archive.vn).
What many users do not know: The website provides users’ data to Russia.
The data goes to Mail.ru and thus to the Russian Internet company VK. A look at the website with Webbkoll shows the following Russian domain names:
privacy-cs.mail.rur.mradx.netrs.mail.rutop-fwz1.mail.ru
First and foremost, top-fwz1.mail.ru/js/code.js is integrated. Further code from Russia is then loaded.
The following applies to Russian Internet companies:
“Russia demands unconditional cooperation and extensive control options from its flourishing IT economy. It is not just about the full possession of the largest social network (VK) and the largest payment service (
Mail.ru), but in the case of Yandex also to influence the entire output of Yandex News.
The data collected show which Paywall content is particularly popular in western media, but could also provide insight about their users. One can speculate about the importance of such data in the hybrid Russian war against Europe and the rest of the West.
(the following part is about the most common originating news sites in Switzerland that are to be archived. It refers to the above mentioned paywall content)
Incidentally (and in addition), anyone who pays for the paid media content must (also) expect for user data to go to Russia:
«Until recently, Ringier sent - thanks to these cookies - the IP addresses of “Blick” readers to the Russian tech company Yandex. […] Yandex is also listed at «20 Minuten». The free news portsal of the TX Group also works with the platform of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. […] The NZZ also sent data to the east. The traditional company on Falkenstrasse has integrated dozens of trackers, including from Yandex and also from Rutarget, an advertising company that belongs to the Russian Sberbank, is fully controlled by the state and is on the sanction list of the United States. »
The operators of «Archive.Today» do not open their identity. Neither an impressum nor a data protection declaration can be found on the website.
“Liberapay” in France should be able to say who operates “archive.today”. If you click on the “Donate” button at “Archive.Today”, you will be forwarded to the donation platform “Liberapay”.
A (more) reputable alternative is the Internet Archive at Archive.org, best known for the archiving of websites at web.archive.org.
Posted to privacy@lemmy.ml, privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com and privacy@lemmy.world
edit 2 days later:
I’m aware this isn’t the biggest smoking gun ever. But this particular service is in such widespread use that I feel it’s important to shine a light on it.
Of course any post with certain keywords in the title will attract weird commentary, but I think you’ll find that even the most contrary ones do not dispute the facts outlined in the article - just try to play them down, or ridicule them.
It’s free, it has fast servers, it doesn’t ask questions of you. It’s a godsent!
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think this has anything to do with archive.today:
Incidentally, anyone who pays for the paid media content must also expect for user data to go to Russia:
«Until recently, Ringier sent - thanks to these cookies - the IP addresses of “Blick” readers…
This has to do with a non-Russian company inadvertently adding trackers that linked back to a Russian website. There is no inherent danger of archive.today collecting cookies from other websites if you browse to it.
If browsing to archive links is concerning, especially if it’s the only available option, I would generally recommend a VPN, but ironically, VPNs seem to trigger CloudFlare (aka non-Russian) issues that prevent me from viewing media archived on this site
No, this part is about the most common originating news sites in Switzerland. It refers to the above mentioned paywalled content:
The data collected (on archive.today through
mail.ruet al.) show which Paywall content is particularly popular in western media, but could also provide insight about their users.So what it means is “in addition to what archive.today does, even nationally popular news sites send data to Russia”. As in “even if you pay to take the paywall down, your favorite news corp still sends data to Russia”. Many probably see
archive.todaymore as a paywall circumvention tool, than an actual web archive.It is admittedly confusing. I tried to add a little explanation to the OP.
