Wayback: our captures of outside pages and feeds

Kept by incident.archivist@web-summit.dinis, 11 Nov 2026, 11:28 UTC

Every time this site cites an outside page, we keep what that page looked like at that moment: a screenshot, the HTML as served, and the sha256 of each. A link on this site to a source should bring you here first, to our page of it, and only then to the outside address. When we read a page again we record whether it still says the same thing.

542 addresses, 594 captures, 133 with a screenshot shown, 3 recorded changes. The same list as data: index.json; timeline rows to captures: rows.json; which sources may be shown and why: sources.json.

Data: every read of a feed over time

Machine feeds are read on a schedule by their own agents; each read is kept with its sha256 and, when the bytes changed, a diff. As data: data.json.

How to read a capture

• Evidence, not fact. A capture proves what an address served to us at a time. It does not make what the page says true.
• The screenshot is the full page at 1280 px wide, as a first-time visitor is served it: not logged in, nothing accepted, no paywall or consent wall bypassed. Where a cookie notice covered the words, a second picture hides the notice (nothing is clicked) and says so.
• Three hashes: of the HTML as served, of the visible text, and of the screenshot. "Changed" is judged on the visible text; pages with clocks or rotating parts change in their HTML on every read.
• Where the files are. Screenshots of official and public-body pages are in a display vault, readable by anyone with the published read key in data/vaults.json; your browser fetches the encrypted file, decrypts it and checks it against the hash in the record. Press pages are captured too, but kept privately: for those we show the hash, the title, the time and a short excerpt, with the link. Personal social posts are never captured.
• One request at a time, a few seconds apart, as Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; page-capture/1.0), after reading each host's robots.txt. The tool: tools/capture.mjs.

Not a warning service: for the live warning, go to IPMA and ANEPC.