If you think that your Photographs and other information on the internet are there forever, think again! It is estimated that 40% of the early internet has now disappeared, that doesn’t take into consideration the thousands of Bulliten Boards and other interest groups that used private servers before that.
Any information or media that you post in places like Facebook or Flickr will go west at some point, you can be certain of it. As far as the internet is concerned, almost none of it is archived. Where you have a paid for service, well it will only exist as long as it is proffitable and paid for.
What information has been lost, well my bookmarks quite often come back with a page not found message – but then I have bookmarks going back to the early 90’s. So it is hardly a surprise that a number of these sites have gone, but it is concerning – especially when you know that what you are looking for was on that page.
I know many people have an aversion to using the resources on the internet for research, but in many cases the information on the internet will outlive the official information. The data retained by airports, safety bodies, air traffic control, airlines and other bodies that hold aviation data – is no longer on paper. With the associated costs of storing legacy data or migrating it to newer systems, the data is no longer preserved in the same way as it was.