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The Internet is Forever: How to uncover hidden information

Tip Sheet: New Year, New Lawmakers

AccessFest 2025 Tip Sheet



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Individuals and organizations are increasingly scrubbing their digital footprints, but journalists can often still track down what has been removed. This tip sheet provides you with tools to uncover deleted records, scrubbed public data, and hidden connections using investigative techniques and open-source intelligence.

Removed and Changed Sites

Tools for change detection

  • Visualping – Visual/text change tracking with alerts, Chrome extension (freemium)

  • WebSite-Watcher – Advanced local tool for Windows ($$)

  • Distill.io – Content tracking with local app, browser, Chrome extension (freemium)

  • PageCrawl.io – Team-friendly archiving and alerts (freemium)

  • Wachete – Tracks private/password-protected pages (freemium)

  • ChangeTower – Keyword and content change alerts (freemium)

  • Fluxguard – HTML, visual and text tracking, translation (freemium)

  • Follow That Page – Basic email alerts for text changes

  • SiteDelta – Firefox-only in-browser tracker

  • KeyCDN Tools  – check HTTP header for when page was last modified

  • Internet Archive

  • MuckRock

    • Requests (FOIA) 

    • Document Cloud

    • Want to monitor a specific webpage for new updates? It’s now easy to get alerts when a page — or even just a specific part of a page — has changed, thanks to Klaxon Cloud. The Add-On builds on the Marshall Project’s original Klaxon site monitoring tool to let you specify a page to watch and then get email alerts when the part of the page you care about — maybe a list of documents, a key official’s biography, or a daily count on inmates — changes.

    • It also integrates with the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine for page snapshots, creating a history of tracked pages update, change and even disappear over time, giving you a copy of each version of the page along the way.

    • To use it,  just log in to DocumentCloud and pull up the Klaxon Add-On. You can pin it by clicking the thumbtack icon to make it easier to access down the line — pinned Add-Ons appear on the left-hand sidebar.

    • Klaxon is great if you just want to keep tabs on when a web page updates, but DocumentCloud is most useful if you have documents to actually analyze. Fortunately, the Scraper Add-On will fetch all the linked documents on a given page and drop them into your DocumentCloud account for safe keeping. You can optionally specify a project to put them in.

    • Questions? Contact MuckRock's Dillon Bergin at dillon@muckrock.com.d

Tracking social media and search engine record

Scrubbed Public Data

Tools for change detection

Tips for finding missing content

  • The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine can find older versions of web pages.

  • OSINT Framework is a good place to start if you don’t know where to look.

  • Use Boolean search operators to find web pages that may still exist but have been removed from indexes. 

    • site: search a specific domain

    • AND/OR – search multiple terms

      • Example: “New Orleans” AND (IRE OR “Investigative Reporters”

    • HYPHEN/MINUS SYMBOL – exclude terms or sites

      • Example: “investigations” -site:ire.org

    • FILETYPE – search for a specific type of file

      • Example: filetype:pdf

    • ASTERISK –  placeholder for word

      • Example: Investigative Reporters * Editors”

Tools for archiving content

Hidden Connections

Court Records

Personal Privacy

  • Sunlight Research Center contributed research to a Texas Tribune investigation of campaign spending during Amarillo's contentious “Sanctuary City for the Unborn” ballot measure. The proposition would have allowed lawsuits against people accused of helping others travel through Amarillo for out-of-state abortions. Sunlight researched campaign spending on advertisements by both proponents and opponents of the ballot measure. We found that only two groups disclosed billboard-related expenses totaling $7,300. Yet, we identified at least 21 billboard ads supporting and opposing the ballot measure that would have cost at least $20,650 to $24,300. 

  • Political campaigns often use billboards, but campaign finance reports don't always fully disclose spending. This guide will help reporters compare reported campaign spending with actual billboard advertising to identify potential discrepancies.

Questions or comments about Sunlight's workshops and resources? Contact Elizabeth at elizabeth@sunlightresearch.net.

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