One can only imagine the sharing and reading histories the operator has accumulated on the people using it. No restrictions on how the operator can use that data
What histories? Does archive.is take your email, phone, credit card, and passport pic when you want to read anything? The most there is is just an IP address in the server logs, for most users, rotated by their ISP on regular basis, easily obscured with a VPN.
This need to make IP-infringement sound ominous by invoking some ill-defined spy plot is a tired cliche.
There are many mechanisms, widely used, to aggregate information from many sources into a profile of you, and using your IP as an identifier isn't hard. Many lawsuits find their targets based on IP addresses, for example.
> easily obscured with a VPN
I think we can expect that commercial VPNs are compromised, at least by intelligence services. Imagine you opened a bar and advertised, 'dissidents come here to drink in privacy'. I'm sure you'd attract others too to an obviously target-rich environment.
Records of every URL submitted and accessed by a given IP address+browser fingerprint^1
1. Archive.today sites use a form of "pixel tracking" to collect IP addresses via popular graphical browsers, the ones that are required to be used to solve CAPTCHAs, that automatically request URLs in HTML tags with the "src" attribute, e.g., "img" tags
2. Archive.today sites serve CAPTCHAs to some users^3 which force them to enable Javascript and share browser information
3. For example, those users not using or appearing to use popular graphical browsers
When the proxy operator is (1) anonymous, (2) the potential target of coercion, and (3) outside the user's jurisdiction, how does a proxy user verify (a) whether the operator collects, or is being forced to collect, data or (b) what it might do, or be forced to do, with colllected data
Archive.today is very popular with HN commenters