5 min read
14 Nov 2025 UPD: We have updated the article with more information on the bailiff reports sent to us and the person who ordered them.
The FBI has been investigating Archive.is (also known as Archive.today), as was recently revealed. The agency issued a subpoena to the site’s domain registrar, asking for information about the person behind it, citing a “federal criminal investigation.”
Archive.is was launched in 2012 by someone using the name Denis Petrov — though whether that’s their real identity remains unclear. The site lets users save “snapshots” of web pages by submitting URLs, which makes it a valuable tool for preserving content that might otherwise disappear. But because it can also be used to bypass paywalls, it’s long been a thorn in the side of many media organizations.
While the exact nature of the FBI investigation hasn’t been confirmed, it is speculated it can be related to copyright or CSAM (child sexual abuse material) dissemination issues. Altogether, the situation suggests growing pressure on whoever runs Archive.is, and on intermediaries that help make its service accessible. AdGuard DNS, as it turns out, may have just become one such pressure point.
How we got entangled
A few weeks ago, we were contacted by a representative of an organization called the Web Abuse Association Defense, a French group claiming to fight against child pornography. Their website is webabusedefense.com, and here is the archived version as of November 7.
They demanded that we block the domain archive.today (and its mirrors) in AdGuard DNS, alleging that the site’s admin had refused to remove illegal content since 2023. To be clear, Archive.today allows users to take “snapshots” of any webpages, including potentially illegal material. In such cases, it’s the site admin’s job to respond to complaints and promptly remove that content.
This struck us as strange — we’re not a hosting provider, and it seemed unusual for an infrastructure-level service like ours to be asked to take action like this.
Soon after, the situation escalated into what we could only describe as direct threats:
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