Web Copy

Cyotek WebCopy is a free Windows application that crawls and downloads entire websites or specified sections of websites to a local drive, creating an offline copy of web content. For OSINT investigators, digital archivists, and researchers who need to preserve web content for analysis, evidence collection, or offline review, WebCopy provides granular control over what is captured and how it is stored.

Unlike browser-based save functions that capture only the current page, WebCopy recursively follows links within a defined scope — downloading HTML pages, images, scripts, stylesheets, and other assets. The result is a browsable offline copy of the target website that can be reviewed without an active internet connection, which is critical for preserving a snapshot of a site at a specific point in time before content changes or disappears.

For investigative work, WebCopy enables investigators to capture entire sections of websites relevant to an investigation — a social media profile's public posts, a forum thread, a corporate website, or a news archive. These captures preserve evidence that may be altered or deleted after an investigation becomes known to the subject. Having a local, timestamped copy of content is far more reliable than bookmarks or cached pages.

The application's crawl scope controls allow investigators to limit capture to specific directories, file types, or link depth — preventing runaway downloads of entire hosting providers when only a portion of a site is relevant. URL filters can exclude certain content types (videos, large files) to manage storage efficiently.

WebCopy creates logs of everything downloaded including HTTP response codes, allowing investigators to identify broken links, redirects, and missing resources that might indicate partially deleted content. These logs support forensic analysis of site structure.

Limitations include sites using heavy JavaScript frameworks where content is loaded dynamically — WebCopy captures the initial HTML but may miss dynamically rendered content. For JavaScript-heavy sites, tools like HTTrack or browser-based archiving tools are more effective. Also note that crawling requires authorization for non-public sites and may violate terms of service of some platforms.

Store captured copies with folder structure intact, and note the capture date and tool version for forensic documentation.