How I Deleted my Site from the Wayback Machine

September 19, 2020

This week my website was removed from the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine is an impressive website that lets you view what a website looked like years ago. As part of Archive.org Internet Archive, this website is truly impressive and holds entertainingly-old versions of most webpages. Just look at Amazon.com in the year 2000 for a good laugh.

I started this blog as a child twenty years ago and after seeing what the Wayback Machine pulled-up I realized that it may be best that the thoughts I had as a child stay in the past. I have personal copies of all my old blog posts, but with the wisdom of age and hindsight I’d much prefer that that material stay off the internet. Luckily I was able to get my website removed from the Wayback Machine, and this post documents how I did it.

For those of you wanting to do the same, this is how I did it: I sent an email to info@archive.org stating the following:

Please remove my website [MY URL] from the Wayback Machine. [MY URL]/robots.txt has been updated to indicate I do not wish this website to be archived.

https://lookup.icann.org/ shows that [MY URL] points to [HOSTING COMPANY] nameservers, and I have attached a recent invoice from [HOSTING COMPANY] as evidence that I own this domain.

If additional evidence or action is required (e.g., DMCA takedown notice) please let me know.

Thank you!
Scott

I’m not sure if editing robots.txt was necessary, but I felt it gave credence to the fact that I had control over the content of this domain. That file contains the following text. In the past I read this was all it took to get your website de-listed from the wayback machine, but I added this same file to another domain name of mine and it has not been de-listed.

User-agent: archive.org_bot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

I attached an invoice from the present year showing a credit card payment to my hosting company for the domain as a PDF. Interestingly I did not have to show a history of domain ownership. I downloaded the invoice from my hosting company’s billing page that day, and it displays my home address but not my email address.

Six days later, my site was removed. This is the email I received:

FROM: Office Manager (Internet Archive)

Hello,

The following has now been submitted for exclusion from the Wayback Machine at web.archive.org: [MY SITE]

Please allow up to a day for the automated portions of the process to run their course and for the changes to take effect.

– The Internet Archive Team

I reviewed a lot of websites before reaching my strategy. I was surprised to see some people using issuing DMCA takedown notices notices to Archive.org, and was happy to find this was not required in my case. Here are some of the resources I found helpful:

Archive.org forums - many recent discussions about how to have websites removed. Ironically posting on a public forum may draw more attention to a sensitive website before it is shut down, so this doesn’t seem like a great strategy. However, it does seem to work for some.
How to Block Your Website From The Wayback Machine - uses robots.txt which worked in ~2018 but is no longer sufficient.
3 Easy Steps To Removing Your Site From Archive.org Wayback Machine - suggests creating a robots.txt, issuing DMCA takedown notice, then sending email.
How to Delete Your Site from the Internet Archive - suggests creating a robots.txt, issuing DMCA takedown notice, sending historical records of domain ownership, then sending email.

⚠️ WARNING: This may not be permanent. I’m not sure what will happen if I lose my domain name (and robots.txt file) in the future. It is possible that my site is still being archived, while not being available on the wayback machine, and that some time in the future my site will be re-listed.

If you have updated information send me an email so I can update this page! In the mean time, I hope this information will be useful for others interested in curating their historical online presence.

Feedback Source Contact