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Archive of Our Own has confirmed a security incident behind its extended outage, while saying no AO3 data has been deleted. The Organization for Transformative Works' October 30 update says works, bookmarks and kudos remain intact.
AllinOneDownloader illustration of preserved manuscripts behind a temporary access barrier; this is not an AO3 facility photograph.
The disclosure adds a security explanation to an outage that began on October 29. OTW says it does not currently believe the user database was stolen, but cannot rule that out. Preserved writing and a possible exposure of account information are therefore separate issues.
What is known about accounts and access
The official status update identifies usernames, email addresses, IP addresses and hashed passwords as information the database may contain. It recommends changing passwords on other sites if they were also used for AO3. That is precautionary advice, not confirmation that the database was taken.
OTW says donor information is held in a separate, unlinked system and was not exposed. Its restoration estimate remains a minimum of two weeks and potentially four, with earlier read-only or degraded access possible. Such access could be interrupted again.
Preserved does not mean reachable
For people using the nonprofit fanworks archive, three questions now have different answers: whether writing survives, whether account information stayed private, and when normal service returns. An intact work can still be unavailable during recovery. A read-only return would also fall short of restoring every publishing function.
This differs from YouTube's account-level publishing pause, which leaves old videos visible. Existing legitimate offline copies can help readers during an outage, but our download-safety guide remains relevant when judging unfamiliar download sites. The incident notice offers no fixed reopening date.
