Wedding Registry sites are platforms that enable engaged couples to create lists of gifts, cash, honeymoons, experiences, and charities that they can share with their guests online prior to the wedding. Wedding registry sites usually enable guests to buy gifts individually or contribute towards a gift being purchased between a group of guests. Some wedding registry platforms enable wedding guests to order gifts directly through their platform, whilst others route guests to a third-party website for checkout.
Some wedding registry sites also enable couples to create dedicated websites about their wedding and their relationship, which include event details, like date and location, photo galleries, itineraries, recommended hotels for guests, and more.
This is an introduction to conducting OSINT Investigations on wedding registry sites. To view the full webinar click here or download the guide, which includes advanced techniques and analysis, click here.
Locating Content
Wedding registry sites can be searched through both inbuilt search functionality within each platform or through search engines.
Search Engines
When searching for relationship information relating to a couple and the location of a wedding registry is not known, search engines enable investigators to search multiple sites at once. Most wedding registry platforms index the websites and gift registries for their couples, however, a small number, like Walmart, do not.
Using the Google Search index, couples' names, wedding locations, wedding dates, and any relevant identifier keywords can be searched across multiple wedding registry sites to generate results. Investigators can get started searching on search engines using the site advanced operator, i.e.:
site:theknot.com
By entering the “site:” command and a web address into a search engine, such as Google, you’ll tell the search engine to only show you web pages that come from that website. The ‘site:’ operator removes pages from any other website from the search results. We’ll start here to see the type of content that is available from a wedding registry website. At the time of this writing, and from our browser specifically, there are 3,980,000 results from theknot.com in Google’s index that are being returned within the time window for the search.
Building on this query, investigators can add other websites that they want to search in addition to theknot.com using the ‘OR’ operator. The ‘OR’ operator can be used repeatedly, enabling investigators to add as many wedding registry sites as they wish. Using the query below, investigators can search created wedding registries at The Knot, Joy, Zola, Blueprint, MyRegistry, Amazon, Bloomingdales, Target, and Bed Bath & Beyond at once:
site:theknot.com/us/ OR site:registry.theknot.com/ OR site:withjoy.com/ OR site:zola.com/wedding/ OR site:blueprintregistry.com/website/ OR site:myregistry.com/wedding-registry/ OR site:amazon.com/wedding/registry/ OR site:bloomingdales.com/registry/wedding/guest/ OR site:target.com/gift-registry/ OR site:bedbathandbeyond.com/store/giftregistry/viewregistryguest/
Using this query, 9,700,000 results are returned by Google within the time window for the search.
Dedicated Wedding Registry Sites
When searching for profiles via the search tools within wedding registry platforms, investigators can search for an individual’s name against individuals registered as getting married within the platform.
The Knot
The Knot Worldwide is an American media and technology company founded in 1996 that provides content, tools, products, and services for couples who are planning weddings, creating a home, and starting a family. Through The Knot, couples can create wedding websites and gift registries.
Investigators can search The Knot for registered couples' details by heading to https://www.theknot.com/registry/couplesearch. Simply enter the forename of the subject in the ‘First Name’ field, the surname of the subject in the ‘Last Name’ field, and hit enter. If the date of the wedding is known, the ‘Month’ and ‘Year’ dropdown fields can be completed, however, these details are not required to complete a search.
Results will populate below the data entry fields and search button. Results will contain both registrants' full names, wedding dates in US format (DD-MM-YYYY), wedding state, a link to the gift registry, and a link to the wedding website, if such a website has been created by the couple.
If a wedding website has been created, click on the ‘Our Website’ hyperlink in the ‘Wedding Website’ column in the correct row for the corresponding couple. An example of a The Knot wedding website can be found at https://www.theknot.com/us/david-smith-and-alisha-thomas-may-2022. In this example, the URL for the couple’s wedding website contains both individuals’ names and the month and year of the wedding.
The Knot wedding websites have several subpages that can provide information and media to investigators relating to the planned wedding. To access these subpages, either click the links at the top of the page or append a slug to the URL.
Story: “our-story”, i.e.
https://www.theknot.com/us/david-smith-and-alisha-thomas-may-2022/our-story
Photo Gallery: “photos”, i.e.
https://www.theknot.com/us/david-smith-and-alisha-thomas-may-2022/photos
Wedding Party Information: “wedding-party”, i.e.
https://www.theknot.com/us/david-smith-and-alisha-thomas-may-2022/wedding-party
Q&A: “/q-a”, i.e. https://www.theknot.com/us/david-smith-and-alisha-thomas-may-2022/q-a
Travel Information: “travel”, i.e.
https://www.theknot.com/us/david-smith-and-alisha-thomas-may-2022/travel
Suggested Things to Do: “things-to-do”, i.e.
https://www.theknot.com/us/david-smith-and-alisha-thomas-may-2022/things-to-do
Clicking on the ‘Our Registry’ hyperlink in the ‘Registry’ column in the correct row for the corresponding couple will open up their gift registry. An example wedding website can be found at https://registry.theknot.com/john-smith-smith-john-august-2021-ca/37626727. In this example, the URL for the couple’s gift registry contains both individuals’ names and the month and year of the wedding. Some registries will contain a list of gifts, whilst others will be blank. A gift registry may be blank because the wedding has passed or because the couple has not yet set the gifts.
Joy
Joy is an American company founded in 2016 that enables couples to build a website, manage guest lists, create gift registries, and send save-the-dates and wedding invites.
Investigators can search Joy for registered couples' details by heading to https://withjoy.com/find-a-couple/. Simply enter the forename, surname, or full name in the data entry field and hit enter.
Results will populate below the data entry field. Results will contain both registrants' full names, wedding dates in US format (MONTH DD-YYYY), a link to the gift registry, and a link to the wedding website, if such a website has been created by the couple.
If a wedding website has been created, click on the ‘Website’ hyperlink for the corresponding couple. An example of a Joy wedding website can be found at https://withjoy.com/callie-charles-and-charles-martin/welcome. In this example, the URL for the couple’s wedding website contains both individuals’ names.
Some pages and content on Joy can be restricted to guests by couples using passwords.
Joy wedding websites have several subpages that can provide information and media to investigators relating to the planned wedding. To access these subpages, either click the links at the top of the page or append a slug to the URL.
Travel Details: “travel”, i.e. https://withjoy.com/charles-and-charles-cl111bgct000p067o7jg95y2n/travel
Couple’s Story: “story”, i.e.
https://withjoy.com/callie-charles-and-charles-martin/story
Photo Gallery: “moments”, i.e.
https://withjoy.com/callie-charles-and-charles-martin/moments
Clicking on the ‘Registry’ hyperlink for the corresponding couple will open up their gift registry. An example wedding website can be found at https://withjoy.com/callie-charles-and-charles-martin/registry. In this example, the URL for the couple’s gift registry contains both individuals’ names followed by /registry. If the couple has a wedding website, simply add “/registry” to the wedding website URL.
Advanced Extraction
Manual extraction methods can be used by investigators looking to extract images from wedding registry sites with gallery pages, including The Knot, Joy, and Zola.
Images can be easily extracted from these platforms utilizing two different methods. These methods work for any images on the pages, however, are particularly useful when a subject’s wedding website has a gallery page.
The easiest way to extract single images is to simply click on an image to open it to its full size and then right-click on the image, which will allow investigators to save an image directly to their device.
The second method to extract an image from wedding registry sites is to right-click on a page and click ‘Inspect’. This process can bypass restrictions on saving images from a page and is useful when extracting multiple images from one page, to save time spent scrolling the page and manually saving each image.
Once the Inspect window has opened, navigate to Network in the tab list at the top, before selecting the Img tab in the list of tabs below this.
Hit the ‘Refresh’ button to refresh the page and the list of results will populate with all of the images contained within the page.
You can then right-click on the image that you wish to extract and click ‘Open in new tab’ to open it in a new post.
Image Links will appear as:
The Knot - https://media-api.xogrp.com/images/uniquestring~rt_auto-sc_600.600?ordering=explicit, i.e.
Joy - https://ceremony-media.withjoy.com/ir/uniquestring, i.e. https://ceremony-media.withjoy.com/ir/18/e98a360689ac71852cab12c6819b894750b35b55461b19138/vnfQTt47TBOp7T49KNQE_IMG-4276.jpg/st%3D2022-04-19T13%253A51%253A33Z%26se%3D2023-04-19T13%253A56%253A33Z%26sp%3Dr%26sv%3D2016-05-31%26sr%3Dc%26sig%3DPvEaluqHzr2TXZDuGyRsllRBru4rdZoBxWoOw%252FK0y5k%253D
Zola - https://images.zola.com/uniquestring?w=800&h=800, i.e. https://images.zola.com/d9a1b383-29e4-45a0-b16b-8d29e1c46970?w=800&h=800
On both The Knot and Zola, the image that opens in the new tab may not be the full size available for the image.
Within The Knot, investigators are able to return the image as a larger image by editing ‘600.600’ in the URL. For example, change https://media-api.xogrp.com/images/7d51dfad-8a1a-4dba-aa78-8d78f02db83a~rt_auto-sc_600.600?ordering=explicit to https://media-api.xogrp.com/images/7d51dfad-8a1a-4dba-aa78-8d78f02db83a~rt_auto-sc_2000.2000?ordering=explicit.
Having enlarged the image, investigators can zoom in and view background clues and information in greater size.
Similarly, within Zola, investigators are able to return the image as a larger image by editing ‘w=800&h=800’ dimensions in the URL. For example, change https://images.zola.com/d9a1b383-29e4-45a0-b16b-8d29e1c46970?w=800&h=800 to
https://images.zola.com/d9a1b383-29e4-45a0-b16b-8d29e1c46970?w=2000&h=2000.
Automating your Wedding Registry OSINT Investigations
Using a tool like Skopenow, you can automate OSINT research into wedding registries. Skopenow instantly and anonymously locates and archives wedding registry pages, social media accounts and posts, plots location history, flags actionable behaviors, and reveals hidden connections between individuals. Skopenow’s automatic report builder will save you time organizing the analyzed intelligence into a court-ready report. Please reach out to sales@skopenow.com or visit www.skopenow.com/demo to schedule a demo and activate a 7-day free trial for qualified businesses.
To view the full webinar click here or download the guide, which includes advanced techniques and analysis, click here.
AUTHOR
Steve Adams
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