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.ru
  • r.mradx.net
  • rs.mail.ru
  • top-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!

  • pelikan@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    342·
    4 days ago

    The entire original article is nothing more than a mixture of propaganda and incompetence. Even where it doesn’t lie, it tells half-truths.

    I love that it even uses a variation of the good old “when you pirate MP3s, you’re dowloading COMMUNISM” poster as an illustration.

    What many users do not know: The website provides users’ data to Russia.

    You don’t even have to do much research to come to this conclusion, since the owner of archive.today openly states that he uses Yandex for the search function.

    Proof: https://blog.archive.today/post/673695282217762816/just-realized-that-i-can-search-for-keywords-in

    It’s quite funny that the author of the original article somehow ignores this.

    A look at the website with Webbkoll shows the following Russian domain names: privacy-cs.mail.ru r.mradx.net rs.mail.ru top-fwz1.mail.ru

    For some strange reason Webbkoll now shows “No third-party requests”.

    Proof: https://webbkoll.5july.net/en/results?url=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.today

    This is definitely not true, since if you opened devtools in your browser and loaded archive.today, you would see that it loads some trackers and counters from top-fwz1.mail.ru

    I tried many times, but could not get requests to other mentioned domains.

    By the way, the screenshot in the article also shows a request to Google servers - a fact that the author of the article happily ignores. In my case, I do not receive any requests to Google servers, perhaps it was already removed by the owner of archive.today along with requests to the other 3 mentioned domains.

    First and foremost, top-fwz1.mail.ru/js/code.js is integrated. Further code from Russia is then loaded.

    That’s fair, and that’s what I got. But it’s not some random “further code from Russia”, what’s loaded are mail.ru counter and vk.com event trackers:

    Proofs: https://top.mail.ru/help/en/code/https & https://ads.vk.com/en/help/general/sites/offline_events

    Also, you need to disable your adblock to make these scripts load. As funny as it sounds, the adblock plugin with default settings saves you from the KGB.

    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.

    Mail.ru is not “the largest payment service”, it owns payment service VK pay, which is so big that you won’t find its page even in the Russian wiki. Both the outdated statista and the fresh AI-slop don’t even mention it among the most significant contenders:

    Proof: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1056296/most-popular-online-payment-services-russia/

    Proof: https://sergioespresso.com/2024/06/16/which-is-the-most-popular-online-payment-service-in-russia/

    Also, there is no such thing as “Yandex News” for almost 3 years. It’s not owned by Yandex and it’s rebranded to Zen News: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_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.

    One can laugh at such speculations. Like: “the hybrid Russian war against Europe and the rest of the West: expectation vs reality”.

    Expectation: cyber attacks on critical systems, hacking of military IT infrastructure.

    Reality: providing free access to paywalled articles.

    In any case, it is difficult to understand which valuable insight you can get from knowing the popularity of pirated paywalled articles.

    Incidentally (and in addition), anyone who pays for the paid media content must also expect for user data to go to Russia:

    The whole passage is nothing more than propagandistic filler as it has nothing to do with archive.today at all, and the owner of archive.today has no reasonable way of knowing who exactly paid for the article.

    The operators of «Archive.Today» do not open their identity. Neither an impressum nor a data protection declaration can be found on the website.

    I think that the owner of website with pirated content has no other reason to hide his identity than working for the KGB. Literally no other reason.

    I feel I should also quote one sentence from the comments section of the original article. It was written by the author of the article, and it clearly shows his intentions and his goodwill in this case: “but one might wonder whether it’s really necessary to circumvent the corresponding paywall”.

    TLDR: archive.today uses mail.ru counter and vk.com event tracker, which are blocked by ad blockers. So if you use any kind of ad blocker, none of your data will be sent to Russian servers.