Most People Misunderstand About The Internet Being Forever

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Nothing on the internet ever goes away.” As someone who’s been working in web development and hosting since 1998, I can tell you that belief is not only misleading—it can sometimes cause real problems. So the internet is not forever—there is plenty that goes away!

While many items are retained in parts of the internet—many other items simply aren’t.

I recently dealt with a situation that brought this misconception front and center. Two attorneys were involved: one was a long-time client of mine, and the other was his daughter, who had just passed the bar exam. Naturally, the proud dad wanted to help her get started, so he reached out to us at CharlesWorks to get her set up with her own website, email, and hosting pending her opening her own law office. Our team got right to work!

How We Handle New Websites

We build websites for many professionals. This involves taking great care into privacy and security. The initial development phase always takes place online, but access is restricted. The site may be “live” in a technical sense—it’s on the web—but it’s not publicly viewable. Instead, visitors see a standard “Under Construction” page. Only someone with proper login credentials can view the actual content being built behind the scenes.

This setup is very similar to how email works. Your email account is always online—but unless someone logs in, they can’t see anything inside. With the new website, the website is there, but it’s private until it’s ready to go public.

A Change in Plans

Over the course of about several months, our team worked with the new attorney and got her website completed to do what we call “go live”. That’s when it goes from being privately viewed to being viewed by everyone on the internet. During that time, she informed us that she was waiting to complete her licensing, and the site couldn’t be made public just yet. Then, shortly after, she let us know she’d be joining her father’s law office instead. Since she no longer needed a separate web presence, we were asked to shut the site down. We promptly did just that—turning off all associated services and parking the domain.

Everything was handled quickly and respectfully. We believed that chapter had closed.

The Myth of the Everlasting Internet

Fast forward to nearly a year and a half later. I received a message from the same attorney asking about whether any unused portion of her payment remained. Immediately I called her and spoke with her. I reminded her that the website had actually been fully completed and the funding had been used up, and taken down per her request. It was an awkward feeling during my conversation with her, as I never know what the intentions are on the other end. In my mind I knew the project was on the cusp of completion and was nearly perfectly on budget. However, she was gracious, disarming and understanding when we spoke—indicating to me there was no issue whatsoever. She insisted I should not feel awkward.

Much to my surprise, the following week, her father contacted me. He inquired about whether her site was completed. I indicated it was and that I had spoken with his daughter about this the previous week and she indicated she was all set and there was absolutely no issue and she did not want me to feel awkward about the situation.

Then he demanded to see the site that had been taken down a year and a half earlier. I mentioned it was no longer available for any viewing at this point. He stated his belief that he knew that “nothing on the internet ever goes away” and insisted that the website could still be viewed somewhere. That comment struck a chord with me. He insisted I find where it could be viewed and I told him I would research it—leading to many hours of work culminating in this article.

The idea that everything is out there somewhere is a very common assumption. The truth is a bit more nuanced.

What Really Happens When a Website Is Taken Down

Yes, tools like the Wayback Machine Internet Archive (https://archive.org) do actually exist. They crawl websites and take periodic snapshots of what they find. But there are limitations. However, they only capture content that is publicly available at the time they crawl a site. If a site is protected by a login or shows only an “Under Construction” message, then that’s all the Wayback Machine can record.

In this particular case, the Wayback Machine showed a snapshot of the “Under Construction” page from early March 2024, a couple months after the site was originally put online. And that was it. Once the site was turned off not too much later that same month, the Wayback Machine simply captured the CharlesWorks parked page.

The actual content—the completed site—was never “public” for the world to review without logging into it. So it was never crawled. In this case, the full website wasn’t archived anywhere online. It’s gone, just like a deleted draft email that was never sent.

Even the Best Clients Can Be Misled

Unfortunately, this misunderstanding must have led to some tension. The father, who had two websites with us, decided to move them away from us. As always, we respected his decision.

My policy at CharlesWorks is to make moving away when it happens a top priority. We assist with the transition—something we do for any client should they choose to move on. Fortunately, this is a rare occurrence.

At any given time, CharlesWorks is managing around 3,400 websites. Clients come and go. Fortunately, they leave far less than they arrive. Interestingly, about a third of the clients who do leave us eventually come back. This particular attorney has moved away and returned to us several times. I truly hope he does return again. He’s been a solid client on and off for over twenty years, and I believe he knows deep down that we always do our best to serve our clients honestly and thoroughly.

The Takeaway: Privacy Still Exists

The idea that “nothing disappears from the internet” is only partly true. Sure, there are search engines and archive tools. Privacy still exists—especially when it’s intentionally built into a system. At CharlesWorks, we take that seriously.

If a website is never made public, it vanishes. Just like an email no one ever sends. Just like a thought that never makes it past the draft stage.

So next time someone tells you the internet never forgets, remember this: it only remembers what it has actually seen.