Investigating URLs webpages
| Investigating URLs webpages | |
|---|---|
| Name | Investigating URLs webpages |
| Location | H&D Studio |
| Date | 2026/07/17 |
| Time | 14:30-15:30 |
| PeopleOrganisations | Rebekah Lyndon |
| Type | HDSC2026 |
| Web | Yes |
| No | |
This event was only for participants of the Summer Camp 2026 and not open to the public. For public events you could check: HDSC2026 Clouds to Commons Public Program
This skills-sharing explored what we can learn from websites beyond the webpages that are presented to us. We looked at URLs, page sources, and various workarounds to see what information is being taken about us and what semi-hidden information is available to us.
This included a no-coding introduction to inspecting the html of a webpage to identify key information (like time stamps, sources, as well as redirections and connections from chatbots, trackers, and big tech companies.). Together we can open a discussion about how this relates to physical infrastructure/impacts and data privacy.
Some notes and tips gathered during that session!
In a url, keep your eyes open for Percent Encoding and UTM Parameters. Wikipedia is good for more info on these!
For ‘advanced googling’/dorking/search operators, start with https://search.brave.com/help/operators or https://kit.exposingtheinvisible.org/en/google-dorking.html (a little outdated). You can work around a lot of websites’ internal search limitations even just with site: and filetype:
To get to page source:
- Right click in your browser and select ‘View Page Source’
- or Cmd+Option+U / Ctrl+U
- or add ‘view-source:’ at the start of the URL
- some starting points to search for in the page source:
- edit, modified, created, author, key, google, tag, api,