Overview
- AO3 went offline for maintenance on Thursday, October 29, and OTW updated its timeline to say full restoration will likely take about two weeks and could stretch to four weeks.
- OTW says it has found evidence of a security incident, is still investigating its scope, and cannot yet rule out that the user database was accessed even though no data has been deleted.
- The AO3 database may contain usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and hashed passwords, so OTW recommends users change passwords they reuse on other sites as a precaution.
- OTW says it may restore a degraded or read-only version of the site sooner, but doing so could require intermittent additional outages while volunteers work through recovery steps.
- Millions of users and volunteer-run fan communities are sharing backups, posting survival guides, and temporarily moving works to other platforms, underscoring how AO3’s size and nonprofit, volunteer model shape both the impact and the recovery effort.