ForeverData

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Preserving Web Pages

ForeverData allows you to make a permanent copy of a web page as it appears at the time of capture. Web pages on the Internet are dynamic, capable of changing without notice. This poses serious problems for researchers, journalists and others needing to recall prior ads, camera views or content. To use the service, you enter a URL. Then, an image of the web page and a copy of its html text are preserved permanently and associated with a persistent URL. You can then use the persistent URL to recall the page at any time, making it a reliable reference for academic publications and reference materials.

Example.
Below is a capture of the website (www.whitehouse.gov) dated October 2, 2013. The URL, foreverdata.org/a/a13807238102.jpg, permanently preserves this image. The HTML text that generated the file is also permanently preserved at foreverdata.org/a/a13807238102-html.txt. The file, foreverdata.org/a/a13807238102-id.txt, contains information about the capture, including the date and time.
White House sample
URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov, archived at foreverdata.org/a/a13807238102.jpg on October 2, 2013.

Integrity

Each capture is date and time stamped and a hash made of the capture to authenticate it. Hashes from all the captures in our entire collection are compiled in a directory and the directory itself is hashed to provide a unique identifier for our collection at the time. We report and record these hashes publicly. If any change occurs to any capture in our collection, these hashes would not be reproducible. We are only able to reproduce the hashes with these specific copies of captures, providing assurances that the captures are authentic. (We use MD5 for hashing.)


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