"archive.is" added to the spam blacklist

[Michaeldsuarez]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist&diff=712900996&oldid=712859789

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#archive.is (permalink)

I'm late in reporting this, but Archive.is has been added to the spam blacklist. Technically, links to Archive.is have been prohibited since 2013, but I'm creating this thread to remind people of the issue.

The rationale some Wikipedians used during the various RfC to prohibit the links are outrageous:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC

I prefer this option. It is based primarily on my belief that the IPs were not being used legally. This makes me distrust the motives of archive.is, and suspicious that we are being set up as the victim of a Trojan Horse: once the links to archive.is are established, those links can be rerouted to anywhere. If illegal means were used to ''create'' the links, why should we trust the links to remain safe?—[[User:Kww|Kww]]([[User talk:Kww|talk]]) 15:57, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

'''Support''' removal of all archive.is links now. After the repeated insertions of links by botnet(s), I have little faith in the ethics of the site owners. They could well turn their site into a malware dissemination tool. There is other corroborating evidence for low ethics like their choice of data storage ISPs and lack of respect for robots.txt (and thus the content/copyright owners' desires). [[User:Someone not using his real name|Someone not using his real name]] ([[User talk:Someone not using his real name|talk]]) 02:55, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

'''Support''' after reading [[User:Kww]]'s rationale. We don't know what the purpose of the links is, and so we can't be sure that they aren't being used as a Trojan horse. If the nature and details of the archive are better known, I may change this to option 1. [[User:Robert McClenon|Robert McClenon]] ([[User talk:Robert McClenon|talk]]) 16:01, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

'''Support with blacklist''': The operator of archive.is appears to be acting in extreme bad faith in how he is inserting these links; consequently, I don't feel we can trust the site's contents in the future. --[[User:Carnildo|Carnildo]] ([[User talk:Carnildo|talk]]) 23:21, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

'''Support''' The security issues involved are far too plausible to leave these links in Wikipedia without strong evidence that the archive is run by an organization capable of maintaining the archive, and with accountability for any malware or problematic content that may appear later. Big money can be made from infecting computers used to browse the Internet, and someone running a bot operating from multiple IPs demonstrates high motivation and a low regard for ethics. [[User:Johnuniq|Johnuniq]] ([[User talk:Johnuniq|talk]]) 00:37, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC_2:

'''Support''' We should not be linking to sites that could infect user's computers or rely on that functionality to operate. (note: if someone developer a legit peer-type service, that would be different; it's the unknowing potential misuse of compromised systems that's at issue). --[[User:Masem|M<font size="-3">ASEM</font>]] ([[User Talk:Masem|t]]) 20:55, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC_3

'''Oppose''' Whoever is behind archive.is has demonstrated that they are willing and able to do anything, and they cannot be trusted. If thousands of links are established on Wikipedia, the archive operator can later do whatever they want when a link in an article is clicked. [[User:Johnuniq|Johnuniq]] ([[User talk:Johnuniq|talk]]) 02:04, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

'''Oppose''' The archive.is links present a possible (even if not confirmed) threat to readership. Immediate removal is more important that having ~16,000 some articles with dangling references most which can be fixed in time. --[[User:Masem|M<font size="-3">ASEM</font>]] ([[User Talk:Masem|t]]) 15:31, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

'''Oppose''' &mdash;{{anchor|ceyopposearg1}} My opposition is based on the funding mechanism for archive.is / archive.today and the consequences which come with that. The funding is private and not disclosed; there can be interruption of the service (likely permanent?) upon the death of one person; the private funding might not be sufficient and a turn to advertising would need to be taken; not a word is said about copyright in the FAQ. These points are in the [http://archive.today/faq.html archive.today FAQ]. As an aside - much has been said here about robots.txt. The robots.txt file is a standard; it appears to imply no contract nor have a legal standing as an enforceable command. This is an interesting page on the topic &rarr; http://www.robotstxt.org/faq/legal.html . --User:Ceyockey (<small>''[[User talk:Ceyockey|talk to me]]''</small>) 14:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Wow, Wikipedians and their paranoid delusions about anything that isn't a non-profit.

[Vigilant]

What archive services are still allowed?

[thekohser]

Morons.

[Kingsindian]

Wayback machine is allowed. Here's a list of others.

[Randy from Boise]

Wayback machine is allowed. Here's a list of others.

Wayback Machine is part of Archive.org, which is virtually a sister project to WP. Part of the dislike of Archive.is no doubt relates to the strong support of Archive.org.

RfB

[mendaliv]

The big disadvantage of archive.org is that it respects robots.txt, even retroactively (i.e., if a site that's still live adds a robots.txt covering an address that matches something they have archived, they won't retrieve that thing anymore).

I am going to go against the grain though and suggest that there may be a good reason to avoid some web archives (though I don't know anything about archive.is other than that it's really useful). If, for instance, the archive isn't responsive to DMCA takedowns or similar processes, there might be liability reasons not to link to them for unrelated, legitimate archival. Of course, going by what's being said here, that seems not to be what people are worried about.

[greybeard]

Wayback Machine is part of Archive.org, which is virtually a sister project to WP.

Huh? I know Brewster, and know of no relationship between Archive.org and any WMF project. Archive.org crawls en.wp just like anyone else.

[thekohser]

Wayback machine is allowed. Here's a list of others.

Do any of those platforms allow the lowly user to create a real-time archive shot of any website, on demand? I don't think so, but I'll be happy to be shown I'm wrong.

[mendaliv]

Wayback machine is allowed. Here's a list of others.

Do any of those platforms allow the lowly user to create a real-time archive shot of any website, on demand? I don't think so, but I'll be happy to be shown I'm wrong.

Wayback Machine started doing this a couple/few years ago. The main limitation is, as I mentioned above, they're a little overzealous when it comes to a robots.txt exclusion. There's a "save page now" box on the bottom right of web.archive.org. Or you can just append the URL to be archived to the end of http://web.archive.org/save/

Here's an archive of Wikipediocracy's landing page: http://web.archive.org/web/201604142043 ... ocracy.com

[Poetlister]

Wayback Machine is part of Archive.org, which is virtually a sister project to WP.

Huh? I know Brewster, and know of no relationship between Archive.org and any WMF project. Archive.org crawls en.wp just like anyone else.

I think that at one time Archive.org was in some difficulties and WMF thought that it would be a good idea to take it over, but nothing came of the idea.

[Randy from Boise]

Wayback Machine is part of Archive.org, which is virtually a sister project to WP.

Huh? I know Brewster, and know of no relationship between Archive.org and any WMF project. Archive.org crawls en.wp just like anyone else.

They play footsies.

RfB

[ats]

Wayback machine is allowed. Here's a list of others.

Do any of those platforms allow the lowly user to create a real-time archive shot of any website, on demand? I don't think so, but I'll be happy to be shown I'm wrong.

Wayback Machine started doing this a couple/few years ago. The main limitation is, as I mentioned above, they're a little overzealous when it comes to a robots.txt exclusion. There's a "save page now" box on the bottom right of web.archive.org. Or you can just append the URL to be archived to the end of http://web.archive.org/save/

Here's an archive of Wikipediocracy's landing page: http://web.archive.org/web/201604142043 ... ocracy.com

any site that will retroactively delete things because of changes to robots.txt IS NOT AN ARCHIVE. and honestly, robots.txt has no bearing on a single page snapshot, it's entire point is/was to prevent the industrial spiders from taking down websites due to excess demand. Anyone expecting an on demand web tool to obey robots.txt is a moron and if they are that up in arms about it, then they need to vote to sever all ties with basically every major player on the internet including blocking google! Cause yes, google has multiple tools that ignore robots.txt (as they should).

[mendaliv]

Wayback machine is allowed. Here's a list of others.

Do any of those platforms allow the lowly user to create a real-time archive shot of any website, on demand? I don't think so, but I'll be happy to be shown I'm wrong.

Wayback Machine started doing this a couple/few years ago. The main limitation is, as I mentioned above, they're a little overzealous when it comes to a robots.txt exclusion. There's a "save page now" box on the bottom right of web.archive.org. Or you can just append the URL to be archived to the end of http://web.archive.org/save/

Here's an archive of Wikipediocracy's landing page: http://web.archive.org/web/201604142043 ... ocracy.com

any site that will retroactively delete things because of changes to robots.txt IS NOT AN ARCHIVE. and honestly, robots.txt has no bearing on a single page snapshot, it's entire point is/was to prevent the industrial spiders from taking down websites due to excess demand. Anyone expecting an on demand web tool to obey robots.txt is a moron and if they are that up in arms about it, then they need to vote to sever all ties with basically every major player on the internet including blocking google! Cause yes, google has multiple tools that ignore robots.txt (as they should).

*shrug* The wayback snapshot feature worked great for archiving the web sources for the journal articles I was editing last year. Crap on the Venezuelan Constitutional Court's website has a tendency to get moved around, breaking links in print sources quite horribly.

Yeah, it's not likely going to keep records of the hilarious, embarrassing crap some idiot posted on a forum they control... but that's probably not something that belongs on Wikipedia in the first place.

[Michaeldsuarez]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/David_Auerbach_%282nd_nomination%29&diff=715263855

repairing links. Why in the motherloving hell is archive dot is on the spam blacklist? You people...

See this thread for the context.

[Poetlister]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/David_Auerbach_%282nd_nomination%29&diff=715263855

repairing links. Why in the motherloving hell is archive dot is on the spam blacklist? You people...

See this thread for the context.

That edit and a whole lot more have been revdelled.

[unwanted]

Nothing outrageous about my logic at all. Wikipedia was attacked by a botnet adding links to archive.is, and I saw (and still see) no reason to believe that people that use botnets can be trusted.

And before some idiot says "you can't prove it was a botnet", I'll laugh at you in advance. No legitimate network includes IP addresses from cable and DSL modems in dozens of countries.

[Kumioko]

Nothing outrageous about my logic at all. Wikipedia was attacked by a botnet adding links to archive.is, and I saw (and still see) no reason to believe that people that use botnets can be trusted.

And before some idiot says "you can't prove it was a botnet", I'll laugh at you in advance. No legitimate network includes IP addresses from cable and DSL modems in dozens of countries.

Well, can you prove that any of the archive.is additions were not beneficial? Regardless of the source IP, they seemed to be helping and IMO it's better to allow them to do that than to have thousands of dead links. Your arguments amount to nothing more than IP editing is bad fear mongering.

[unwanted]

Nothing outrageous about my logic at all. Wikipedia was attacked by a botnet adding links to archive.is, and I saw (and still see) no reason to believe that people that use botnets can be trusted.

And before some idiot says "you can't prove it was a botnet", I'll laugh at you in advance. No legitimate network includes IP addresses from cable and DSL modems in dozens of countries.

Well, can you prove that any of the archive.is additions were not beneficial? Regardless of the source IP, they seemed to be helping and IMO it's better to allow them to do that than to have thousands of dead links. Your arguments amount to nothing more than IP editing is bad fear mongering.

No: there's a distinction between someone that edits anonymously and someone that breaks into people's computers and commandeers them against their owner's will. And, once someone has performed that criminal act, what reason do you have to expect them to not use those links for malicious purposes, such as, for example, breaking into people's computers and commandeering them against their owner's will?

[Kumioko]

Nothing outrageous about my logic at all. Wikipedia was attacked by a botnet adding links to archive.is, and I saw (and still see) no reason to believe that people that use botnets can be trusted.

And before some idiot says "you can't prove it was a botnet", I'll laugh at you in advance. No legitimate network includes IP addresses from cable and DSL modems in dozens of countries.

Well, can you prove that any of the archive.is additions were not beneficial? Regardless of the source IP, they seemed to be helping and IMO it's better to allow them to do that than to have thousands of dead links. Your arguments amount to nothing more than IP editing is bad fear mongering.

No: there's a distinction between someone that edits anonymously and someone that breaks into people's computers and commandeers them against their owner's will. And, once someone has performed that criminal act, what reason do you have to expect them to not use those links for malicious purposes, such as, for example, breaking into people's computers and commandeering them against their owner's will?

What ever gave you the idea they broke into someone's computer?

I'm not saying they didn't necessarily, but it seems unlikely that this particular website did it.

What is more likely to me is that some folks who allow their websites to be archived with archive.is also work as partner sites to help process the load of various work tasks. Given the size, purpose and popularity of Wikipedia, I would argue that making sure it was updated with their most recent updates would be a reasonable use of resources.

Maybe I am just naive and assuming too much good faith here, but I am not prepared to jump off the cliff assuming criminal intent either.

[unwanted]

Maybe I am just naive and assuming too much good faith here

There's no maybe about it. That attack was widespread, long-lived, and incorporated hijacked consumer computers from all over the world.

[Kumioko]

Maybe I am just naive and assuming too much good faith here

There's no maybe about it. That attack was widespread, long-lived, and incorporated hijacked consumer computers from all over the world.

Please provide some refs. I would like to read up on that. I don't remember seeing anything about that hacking event mentioned in any media, blogs or articles.

[mendaliv]

Maybe I am just naive and assuming too much good faith here

There's no maybe about it. That attack was widespread, long-lived, and incorporated hijacked consumer computers from all over the world.

Please provide some refs. I would like to read up on that. I don't remember seeing anything about that hacking event mentioned in any media, blogs or articles.

Botnet-powered anything is hardly news these days.

I think it's a little silly to assume there's any more ill intent than to promote the use of archive.is as an archival service. But I also agree that the expense typically involved in contracting a botnet controlling organization makes it unlikely that someone did it to promote the use of archive.is out of the goodness in their heart. If we assume the people who control archive.is did, in fact, hire a botnet to promote themselves, they're very likely the type of organization that could be flipped bad overnight.

Of course, are we being naive to assume the links to archive.is content on-wiki would generate so many click-throughs as to enable any serious enterprise, whether compromising computers through attack sites or through other means? Do that many readers actually click on refs? And of those, do that many readers click archived refs? Certainly we can argue that "even one is too many" when it comes to enabling an attack site to reach people, but I seriously doubt how effective using Wikipedia as a vector would be, rather than, say, posting fake Ray-Bans sales on Facebook, or "Check out this one sneaky trick to lose weight" links on Twitter.

[unwanted]

I seriously doubt how effective using Wikipedia as a vector would be, rather than, say, posting fake Ray-Bans sales on Facebook, or "Check out this one sneaky trick to lose weight" links on Twitter.

Being a genius and being a criminal rarely go hand-in-hand.

[tarantino]

I seriously doubt how effective using Wikipedia as a vector would be, rather than, say, posting fake Ray-Bans sales on Facebook, or "Check out this one sneaky trick to lose weight" links on Twitter.

Being a genius and being a criminal rarely go hand-in-hand.

That is the general wisdom, but geniuses probably don't get caught nearly as often as people with sub-normal intelligence. See "An Introduction to the Study of Criminal Genius".

... because criminologists have historically focused their research on vulnerable populations such as juveniles or prison inmates, almost nothing is known about the patterns of criminal behavior among gifted adults with exceptional cognitive abilities. Indeed, prior to this study, no criminological data had ever been gathered on adult offenders with IQ scores in the genius range.

One fascinating story of a genius who did get caught is that of George Marquardt. He's a self-taught chemist who built his own mass spectrometer to assist in maufacturing vast amounts of illicit drugs.

[Kumioko]

There was also this guy named Heisenburg...but alas, he eventually died!

[mendaliv]

I seriously doubt how effective using Wikipedia as a vector would be, rather than, say, posting fake Ray-Bans sales on Facebook, or "Check out this one sneaky trick to lose weight" links on Twitter.

Being a genius and being a criminal rarely go hand-in-hand.

If it's an ineffective vector, then we can probably agree that the damage threatened is minimal... certainly not much worse than most other low-profile websites going rogue.

But as I argued above, I honestly don't see any case where the Wayback Machine wouldn't allow the page to be archived, yet a link to archive.is would be desirable. The benefit of accommodating edge cases, where you might want an archival link to something Wayback won't touch, by allowing archive.is would be even smaller than the small amount of damage threatened were the site to go rogue.

[Poetlister]

Geniuses are unlikely to commit the same sort of crimes as the less intelligent. Would they go around mugging people? They are more likely to specialise in undetectable computer hacking, sophisticated fraud and money laundering.

[Sentinel]

A new RFC to remove Archive.is from the spam blacklist has been started at Wikipedia:Archive.is RFC 4 (T-H-L).

[Poetlister]

A new RFC to remove Archive.is from the spam blacklist has been started at Wikipedia:Archive.is RFC 4 (T-H-L).

Currently running 10:2 in favour. Dirk Beetstra (T-C-L) opposes on the curious grounds that "this does not address the issues and consensuses of the previous RfCs and a supporting closure would not change anything".

[Michaeldsuarez]

Currently running 10:2 in favour. Dirk Beetstra (T-C-L) opposes on the curious grounds that "this does not address the issues and consensuses of the previous RfCs and a supporting closure would not change anything".

The previous "consensus" was the result of Kww and others promoting a conspiracy theory and fear-mongering. Kww's nonsense can safely be addressed by simply ignoring it.

[unwanted]

Currently running 10:2 in favour. Dirk Beetstra (T-C-L) opposes on the curious grounds that "this does not address the issues and consensuses of the previous RfCs and a supporting closure would not change anything".

The previous "consensus" was the result of Kww and others promoting a conspiracy theory and fear-mongering. Kww's nonsense can safely be addressed by simply ignoring it.

You have an alternate explanation for the attacks? You think that archive.is somehow accidentally compromised hundreds of unrelated residential and business computers from all over the world and it was all some kind of big misunderstanding?

[Michaeldsuarez]

You have an alternate explanation for the attacks? You think that archive.is somehow accidentally compromised hundreds of unrelated residential and business computers from all over the world and it was all some kind of big misunderstanding?

You can't establish whether those machines were actually compromised, and you can't establish who actually operated those machines or what their motivation was either. More importantly, the activity of adding archive.is links was never harmful.

[mendaliv]

I would like to see the evidence that it was a botnet versus proxies or some sort of social engineering (e.g., posting "Click this link (link to oldid), click edit, click save! Show Wikipedia they can't stop us!" on imageboards).

[unwanted]

You have an alternate explanation for the attacks? You think that archive.is somehow accidentally compromised hundreds of unrelated residential and business computers from all over the world and it was all some kind of big misunderstanding?

You can't establish whether those machines were actually compromised, and you can't establish who actually operated those machines or what their motivation was either. More importantly, the activity of adding archive.is links was never harmful.

You going to provide an alternative rational explanation to the computers being compromised? Why blocking a computer in India would result in a computer in Vietnam attempting to make precisely the same edit moments later? Why it remained a game of whack-a-mole for hours and then suddenly stopped? How it was a mix of residential and commercial IPs on unrelated networks?

As to whether the edit they were attempting to add was "harmful" or not being the point, I'll remember that the next time I steal your car to go visit my mother.

[tarantino]

You going to provide an alternative rational explanation to the computers being compromised? Why blocking a computer in India would result in a computer in Vietnam attempting to make precisely the same edit moments later? Why it remained a game of whack-a-mole for hours and then suddenly stopped? How it was a mix of residential and commercial IPs on unrelated networks?

They could have been using Hola, which is like a botnet, except that people voluntarily participate.

[Michaeldsuarez]

@Kww: You probably don't realize this, but the motivation for using proxies was actually stated quite plainly in 2010:

I had to use a proxy in order to edit, because my ISP's (fiber.cz) network is blocked as proxy.

The blocked range 88.86.96.0/19 is not an anonymous proxy.

It is network of 8192 IP addresses.

And there are a lot of subnetworks owned by different providers inside the range.

You give me no another possibility as to find an anonymous proxy each time I want to edit, because I am not allowed to edit without the proxy, using my ISP's IP.

Masharabinovich identified archive.is as "[his or her] website" on a forum in 2012. The use of proxies was innocuous. Your fellow sysops left Masharabinovich with little choice but to resort to using whatever unblocked proxies were still available. Perhaps if your fellow sysops had actually listened to Masharabinovich and unblocked his or her IP address, this situation would've been avoided. In fact, proactively rangeblocking suspected proxies has always been a bad idea.

[mendaliv]

Yeah, a lot of weird shit goes down in Eastern European networks. It's a very different internet culture than in the anglosphere, and doing things like jumping around open proxies is not unusual. There's a lot of documentation of things like open proxies in Russian grey hat forums, for instance. I see nothing particularly nefarious about them here, though I would argue that on stability grounds (particularly in comparison to Internet Archive) they should be disfavored.

[Poetlister]

Now 20:3 in favour. That's approaching a snow close. I wonder who will have the courage to close it. It would probably have to be an Arb.

[ats]

Yeah, a lot of weird shit goes down in Eastern European networks. It's a very different internet culture than in the anglosphere, and doing things like jumping around open proxies is not unusual. There's a lot of documentation of things like open proxies in Russian grey hat forums, for instance. I see nothing particularly nefarious about them here, though I would argue that on stability grounds (particularly in comparison to Internet Archive) they should be disfavored.

Part of the issues with Eastern Europe is a distinct lack of available IPs. At one point, a company I worked for had more IPs than any other company or organization outside the US. IIRC we had 3 Class A and an assortment of Class B. We literally had a whole Class A that was dedicated just to testing. By the time I left we were down to a single A and a couple Bs.

[Michaeldsuarez]

https://encyclopediadramatica.se/index.php?title=Archive.is&oldid=900923#The_story (NSFW)

[mendaliv]

https://encyclopediadramatica.se/index.php?title=Archive.is&oldid=900923#The_story (NSFW)

>2016
>linking to ED

[Michaeldsuarez]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Archive.is_RFC_4 (permalink)

It's now 40:11 in favor of removing from the blacklist.

[Poetlister]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Archive.is_RFC_4 (permalink)

It's now 40:11 in favor of removing from the blacklist.

That's quite a shift from 20:3, but still an overwhelming yes vote.

[Vigilant]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Archive.is_RFC_4 (permalink)

It's now 40:11 in favor of removing from the blacklist.

That's quite a shift from 20:3, but still an overwhelming yes vote.

Is it me or are the oppose votes attempting to win the 'dumbest collection of words on en.wp' contest?

[Anroth]

That award went to arbcom when justifying their out of process ban of TDA. This is merely Kww and Dirk flailing like an enraged octopus on its way to the kitchen...

[Poetlister]

Is it me or are the oppose votes attempting to win the 'dumbest collection of words on en.wp' contest?

If you made a list of such attempts across the whole sitr, I expect that it would be of considerable length.

Incidentally, Hobit (T-C-L) has switched from support to oppose, changing the numbers a bit.

[Vigilant]

Is it me or are the oppose votes attempting to win the 'dumbest collection of words on en.wp' contest?

If you made a list of such attempts across the whole sitr, I expect that it would be of considerable length. .

No doubt there would be considerable competition.

[mendaliv]

The fun part is the argumentation about how no other technical means of preventing archive.is spam is worthy of consideration... even though the blacklist won't ever be 100% effective... and despite my delivery of a tailor-made regex that would catch every addition of an archive.anything link as an edit filter.

[Hex]

The RfC has now closed with consensus found to remove Archive.is from the spam blacklist.

[Kumioko]

The RfC has now closed with consensus found to remove Archive.is from the spam blacklist.

Honestly it was a bad decision to add it there in the first place but then look who started the RFC in the first place (I'll save you the trouble of looking it was Kww (T-C-L)).