UP / HOME

Deleting items from Web Archive

Internet Archive lets you save web pages under "Web Archive", it's like bookmarks which is archived & public, anyone can see what you've saved under "Web Archive". I had saved an article & wanted to see what "Save to My Web Archive" does so I tried it. I assumed whatever it is I'll be able to delete it but you cannot delete items under "Web Archive".

I sent an email to info@archive.org asking about this & they replied:

Items cannot be removed from "Web Archive" at this time.

We expect to allow removal but I have no ETA as to when that might happen.

The only option was to delete my account. I read the "How do I delete my account?" page & proceeded to delete my account. Later, I signed up for another account with screen name "notandinus" because apparently screen names cannot be re-used. There was no information regarding this on that help page. I did however got my uploaded items back in my account, maybe they're tied to the email address.

If you want to delete items from your "Web Archive" & retain the screen name then first change the screen name to a long random string & then delete the account. Later, create an account using the same email address & screen name. You should get back your uploaded items & everything from your "Web Archive" will be gone.

Suggestion to the Internet Archive:

Of course, I tried adding the text in 2nd point myself but looks like you cannot edit help.archive.org pages so I sent them an email with both suggestions. Account management on help.archive.org is another mess.

Andinus / 2020-05-15 / Modified: 2020-10-06 Tue 23:31 Emacs 27.2 (Org mode 9.4.4)