Ask HN: What's the story behind the archive.* sites

5 points by throwaway_5753 2 years ago | 3 comments

I see them often posted as a way to circumvent soft paywalls at site like the NYT. I also sometimes see comments on how CloudFlare DNS will not resolve them. I also see there are a number of them with somewhat unusual top-level domains (md, ph, is).

I'm out of the loop but curious -- who runs these sites and why? How do the operators pay for hosting? Is it legal to circumvent soft paywalls like this? Is the paywall circumvention intentional or accidental?

Would love any pointers or details about this useful and mysterious service.

Eduard 2 years ago |

via https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-today-is-failing-... :

> Archive.is’s authoritative DNS servers return bad results to 1.1.1.1 when we query them. I’ve proposed we just fix it on our end but our team, quite rightly, said that too would violate the integrity of DNS and the privacy and security promises we made to our users when we launched the service.

> The archive.is owner has explained that he returns bad results to us because we don’t pass along the EDNS subnet information. This information leaks information about a requester’s IP and, in turn, sacrifices the privacy of users. This is especially problematic as we work to encrypt more DNS traffic since the request from Resolver to Authoritative DNS is typically unencrypted. We’re aware of real world examples where nationstate actors have monitored EDNS subnet information to track individuals, which was part of the motivation for the privacy and security policies of 1.1.1.1.

> [and more, please read]

I don't know anything about the intricacies of EDNS, let alone the implied implications on anonymity.

But to me, as a EDNS layperson, it sounds like a sensible compromise on both archive.today's and Cloudflare DNS' sides to respect their respective users' wish for anonymity possibly expected by using their offering.

This doesn't answer who is behind archive.today. I'm also curious to know, but am more than happy for their service than knowing about the provider if there was even the slightest risk of compromising it if their identity was spilled.

r721 2 years ago |

>who runs these sites and why?

Here's a relevant article + discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37009598

k310 2 years ago |

Just a note that they CAPTCHA or block archive.XX if you use iCloud Private Relay.

A site setting can be made thusly: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102022

Or Settings -> Safari-> Hide IP address. “Trackers Only” should work, or under the aA Safari toolbar, select “Show IP Address”

PITA this crappified internet.

Editorial comment: sites somehow let search engines see the contents, in order to get clicks, (and then demand that you pay to view). I don’t know the details, but if one can do it, apparently without paying, so can others. Pay sites want it both ways, which is abusive in my book,

Also IMO, paywalls widen the digital divide. When all factual information is paywalled, only lies will be free, and will prevail.

“Democracy dies behind Paywalls”