FBI investigating identity of owner of web fishprint service 'archive.today'



Archive.today , a type of 'web tagging service' that saves a copy of a specified URL on an external server, allowing access even if the page is deleted, has not been identified. It has been reported that the FBI is working to identify the owners of archive.today and its numerous mirror sites, including archive.is and archive.ph.

FBI Tries to Unmask Owner of Infamous Archive.is Site
https://www.404media.co/fbi-tries-to-unmask-owner-of-infamous-archive-is-site/



FBI subpoenas the web registrar behind Archive.is | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/news/815691/fbi-subpoena-archive-is-owner

The Internet Archive , which operates the popular web fishprint service 'Wayback Machine,' is a nonprofit organization with a budget of $37 million (approximately 5.5 billion yen) as of 2019 and 169 full-time employees. Meanwhile, details about the staff running archive.today have remained a mystery.

Who is running the mysterious web fish print service 'archive.today'? - GIGAZINE



Such archive.today updated X on October 31, 2025, and posted a link to a PDF file.



The PDF file linked in the post is a subpoena sent by the FBI to 'Tucows,' a popular Canadian domain registrar. The subpoena requests Tucows to provide the FBI with 'customer or subscriber names, service addresses, and billing addresses,' as well as other information about 'archive.today's customers.' The subpoena also requests 'local and long-distance telephone connection records,' 'payment methods and sources, including credit card numbers,' 'records of internet connection session times and durations,' 'telephone or device numbers,' and 'types of services used.'



The subpoena states that the FBI is conducting a federal criminal investigation and that the disclosure of archive.today's information is required in connection with that investigation, but does not provide details about the specific investigation.

The 'canary' mentioned in the archive.today post likely refers to a '

warrant canary ,' suggesting that 'archive.today will not be shut down immediately because a subpoena has been received but no order has been received from the authorities.' In fact, at the time of writing, archive.today was still accessible as usual, and no subpoena-related messages were displayed on the homepage.



In a blog post updated in 2021, archive.today stated, 'There should be no illusions about the 'truthfulness of content' on the Internet. Website content can disappear at any time. The same is true for archive.today, and we don't know when it will disappear. The only solution is to preserve a little bit of what is destined to disappear quickly.' At the time of writing, neither the FBI, archive.today, nor Tucows responded to requests for comment from the media, and the authenticity and details of the subpoena released by archive.today are unclear.

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in Web Service, Posted by log1e_dh