Typically when we talk about things that are “hidden” in websites, we’re referring to something malicious—data-hoovering cookies, for example, or massive amounts of malware. But not every website dev is trying to con visitors out of their personal info or utterly wreck their devices; some of them just want to say “hi.” And sometimes, that “hi” is written in code.
Companies like Yahoo and eBay have spent years sneaking job ads into the HTML that makes up their websites in the hopes that curious coders would find them. Other sites might have unicorns, guns, or obscure, cryptic messages. Even if you’re not particularly web-savvy, it’s not hard to crack open your favorite site’s source code and comb through it for a bit. If you’re also a diehard Chrome user, then all you need to do is type “view-source:” before a website’s URL. You can also access these codes in any browser by right-clicking on a webpage and hitting “view source.”
To give you some ideas of where to start looking, we’ve rounded up ten of our favorites from across the internet.
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