SECURE JAVA URL ENCODING AND DECODING

Summary from the TLDR Cybersecurity newsletter

URL encoding converts non-standard characters to valid % escapes so URLs transmit reliably. The purpose of URL encoding is not to hide parts of a URL from an outside observer, but rather to ensure that the URL is easily and unequivocally interpretable by the receiving server and to prevent manipulation of the URL by the user of the client that is constructing and sending the URL.