Thursday, April 26, 2018

Source Code in Google Chrome. Make sure to always double check your "sources".

"He hacked the computer!" I have heard that a lot this year from students and teachers when they see the embedded picture below.

What the student did was right click (or Ctrl+Shift+I) on the screen and then selected Inspect. Inspect basically shows you the innards of the site (source code, images, fonts, icons, etc). It is intended for developers, although anyone can access it. Typically the reason they did it was to get attention and make it look like they were "hacking".

I was not sure if I was going to share the following video with everyone but then I thought that knowledge is indeed power. If  someone wanted to get someone else in some hot water - making it look like a social media post says something that it truly doesn't can accomplish this very quickly.

Please note again that they did not change the site - this is a browser feature intended for developers

Just so you have the knowledge - here is how to do it. 
  • Right click on the web-page and select Inspect (or Ctrl+Shift+I)
  • Select Console
  • type in document.designMode = 'on' and select enter
  • you can now go in and select the text you would like to alter 
    • again you are not changing the actual site
The embedded 1 minute and 33 second YouTube tutorial below show you how a user can use this "Inspect" to go into any site and make it look like the site itself has been altered. 



Please remember to always double check your sources before acting. You just never know.

Take care,
Brad

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