The Wayback Machine is Deleting Evidence of Malware Sold To Stalkers (vice.com) 92
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."
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robots.txt (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:robots.txt (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing about preserving data is that you need to do it before the court order to be of any use.
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the wayback machine does not delete stuff. It will remove it from the public site at the request of robots.txt, but it doesn't actually delete its archive. If robots.txt changes again, it comes back
Re: robots.txt (Score:2)
How fortunate then, that no one is asking you to pay for Internet Archive.
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That is EXTREMELY short sighted.
If a company dies should we just forget they ever existed, without ever being able to go back to look at who and what they were? There were never any Amigas because Commodore went and died later on, and if Microsoft were to shut down tomorrow suddenly Windows and DOS have never existed?
You are promoting the very revisionism this article is complaining about.
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Yep, that's how it works (Score:5, Insightful)
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"...
Re:Yep, that's how it works (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost certainly this is how archive.org manages to not get sued out of existence by malicious litigants who want to hide their misdeeds.
If you can figure out how to make the legal system non-abusive, let's do that and then I'm sure archive.org will keep all their old crawls available.
In the meantime let's support them for staying around.
Re:robots.txt (Score:4, Interesting)
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And then they stopped obeying it: https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/ [archive.org]
Which is bad and will lead to countermeasures from an increasing number of people. I for one intend my web sites to be a transient form of communication. I don't care if you personally make a copy for yourself, but the pages are not for someone who didn't read them when they were published. I absolutely do not want to fuel any stalking, mild or threatening. I am not a pol
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet archive (Wayback Machine) does not delete the data for sites with robots.txt that restrict data access. It simply marks the pages as unavailable if it already has them. Now I don't know if they will download new copies once the robots.txt is changed but they don't delete data they already have.
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Yes it does, which is unfortunate. In the past I've noticed this when domain squatters acquire an expired domain and the Web Archive begins denying access to archived pages from the original site.
This appears to be a misread of the robots.txt [moz.com] intent.
Apparently, the "Robot Exclusion Protocol" was intended to prevent unattended crawlers.
However, the Internet Archive also prevents human initiated crawls, and retroactively removes access to previous crawls.
Here is a quote from the FAQ of Archive.is [archive.is], an internet
if you make site unavailable (Score:1)
with robot.txt i read that this causes wayback to remove *all* previous references to site. Correct me if i'm wrong :)
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They're not historians.
They will delete yours too, if you ask (Score:5, Informative)
See https://archive.org/about/faqs... [archive.org]
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.
Re:They will delete yours too, if you ask (Score:4, Informative)
Robots.txt will not work as they started ignoring it (https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/), but the email method still works.
It wasnt malware (Score:5, Funny)
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"
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I think what you mean is "Management and Analytical Logging softWARE"
Illegally spying on spouses? Stalking? (Score:1)
Thanks
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Regardless of legality, putting spyware on your significant other's phone is stalking, plain and simple, and is a sure sign of an abusive relationship.
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Would hiring a private investigator also be considered abusive stalking?
There are significant legal and financial ramifications to being married to a cheating spouse, and one thing you have to have is proof. But, I guess you feel that only those able to afford a private investigator deserve justice.
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Your spouse doesn't need to know your every thought or action but if there is something you are making available for literally any other third party (network provider, government, friend, etc) and you don't think marrying a person implicitly and automatically amounts to granting consent to that plus more you'd n
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It's not ownership of the person, but legally it's joint ownership of their assets.
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Giving up the right to sex without the consent of the person you are marrying is one absolute and universal thing that marriage absolutely includes. That consent is required even if the sex doesn't involve them. Just because someone doesn't own you doesn't mean they don't have rights or that you can do anything you want without consequences. If you violate that agreement they have a right to know and for that information to be disclosed in a divorce. Of course if you are at
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... how do you "stalk" someone you are already married to?
Gee, I dunno, maybe you could "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".
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Remember a few years back DOD funding resulted in a process that let researchers extract an image someone had seen from their visual cortex? Your spouse can consent on your behalf to have that procedure done and see the results.
How is this any different than hiring a private investigator?
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"Remember a few years back DOD funding resulted in a process that let researchers extract an image someone had seen from their visual cortex?..."
uh, no? we're easily decades away from that, if it's possible at all, but it's pretty easy to cook up a "demo" that's convincing enough to part rubes from their money. of course, there are plenty of cash-flush rubes in DOD... good old financial incentives can get scientists and engineers to accomplish anything, even the impossible, as long as you don't look too clo
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Re: Illegally spying on spouses? Stalking? (Score:1)
Considering the statistics on cheating (roughly half of both married men and women will admit to researchers they have cheated on their spouse at least once), the odds are very much in the favor of truth not paranoia if you think your spouse is cheating.
Once you get to that point it doesnâ(TM)t matter who or how often or whatever unless youâ(TM)re in one of those shitty places that require a reason for divorce.
Thank God for no-fault divorce.
â"happier now after dumping that bitch
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If the owner of a particular domain wishes that the HTML documents available through that domain be made available indefinitely, even after the domain owner's insolvency, what should the domain owner do to prevent the domain from being snapped up by a third party that sets robots.txt?
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Don't sell the domain? Make your own copy of the html documents in question and publish them elsewhere? Publish a copy from the backups you kept?
These are simple solutions which don't require you to rely on a third-party to do stuff for you for free...
Domains expire even if not sold (Score:2)
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?
Re: Respectful attitude (Score:1)
Bullshit, there's no reason for a robots.txt to be retroactive. I corresponded with someone at archive.org probably 15 years ago and they don't get that domains change ownership and there's no reason or really any right of a new owner to disallow information that archive.org's robots previously collected, especially as a domain parking company or reseller can, for no good reason block access to a site that although at the time had the same domain, was never theirs. Think of a museum that allowed pictures t
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They're erring on the side of caution, because they don't want lawsuits.
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Meta Comment (Score:1)
Great, now all we need is a Wayback Wayback Machine Machine!
cheating partners (Score:3)
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?
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Probably matters in divorce proceedings (leverage, etc.). Remember: divorce turns marriage into a business transaction!
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Proof theoretically puts you in a better position during the divorce, although if it was discovered that you obtained it with malware it could be very bad for you too.
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spy (Score:1)
Archiving site that ignores robots.txt? (Score:1)