I see a lot of people, including friends and family, sharing URLs rife with tracking parameters.
I feel alone in making sure that I’m sharing the cleanest possible URLs to others. For example, checking if the URLs are shortened to hide plenty of tracking params.
Just need to vent, thanks for reading.
Edit: adding some context for future references.
By using url tracking params, tech companies can track who shares the content and who clicks on that specific shared urls. A simple but effective tracking method.
Try sharing Instagram post or YouTube video from the apps.
Instagram adds ‘igshid=’ . YouTube adds ‘si=’.
If you share the same IG or YouTube content from different accounts. The ‘igshid’, ‘si’ value will be different.
This can be used to tag who shares it, and who clicks on that specific url param value.
TikTok hides a ton of such params behind shortened url. Try expanding tiktok shared urls.
If you use android, use this app to expand, analyze and clean up urls https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker
If you use Firefox (you should), install ublock origin and add this url tracking filter maintained by adguard: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_17_TrackParam/filter.txt
It’s not just safer, they’re nicer to look at too. I hate seeing a 20 character URL followed by a
?and 200 characters.Edit:
product links are a major offender here.I sometimes leave some IDs in that don’t change and seem to track me as a person so the tracking mixes them up with me if the trackers don’t discard it on client change.
idk, this seems like a 99 IQ strat
If anything that just makes it easier to map your social circle. Probably even intentional to see who you share links with.
Nah, that’s when you leave the share tracking ID in. Keep up
I sometimes leave some IDs in
Keep up with yourself?
Indeed. I use Léon on Android, very straightforward, open source, and easy to install and configure…
Nice. I personally prefer using this one: https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker
It looks like Lèon is for sharing (outbound) links to others whereas UrlChecker handles shared (inbound) links. Is that right? Or can UrlChecker also scrub a link before I send it?
It fortunately does both. You “share” a gross link to URLCheck, clean it up within the app, then can share the clean URL to whatever app.
Thanks. I tried it briefly along with Leon and LinkSheet (also mentioned in the comments). URLCheck is hands down the best of the bunch, but its UI is so terrible and obtuse that I can’t bring myself to have to interact with it regularly. Will keep an eye on it though!
This app is awesome, using it and really enjoying it
I would say this is my app do the year
You can also use LinkSheet.
Anything after the question mark in a URL gets deleted before I share it. Screw trackers
Does that do the trick?
theoretically it should, everything after the ? is literally just tracking shit and parameters, everything before is purely navigation stuff
That’s really interesting. Thanks. I never knew this.
If you want to share an opensearch search, it may say something like “https://searchengine.xyz/search?q=how+to+get+a+roblox+girlfriend” in which case it is just the query, but that is generally correct.
Brave includes “copy clean link” in the context menu in the desktop version.
I shall do it, because i hate this URL ads, even more the fucking link shortener, because they disguised it and avoid to see the destination. Because of this i use 2 extension, a Link unshortener, which reveal the real URL, when i click on a shorten link also the Adguardfilter in the Vivaldi’s own trackerblocker, You can find more filters here:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/master/LegitimateURLShortener.txt
Add that to people you know Ublock lists
You know it’s legit because it’s in the name!
Could something like this be built into the lemmy frontend?
I can see a bot doing it, behaving like the Piped-Bot with an explanation why it’s important to remove the tracking.
That’s an interesting idea. Although some websites/apps will have some quirks that might break the general rules.
Friends and family don’t know what cleaning a URL means. Nobody does.
They don’t necessarily need to; hopefully we can help people install uBlock Origin which removes tracking query parameters from URLs. See privacy.txt
I had someone watch me edit a URL in the address bar and she clearly thought I was just fucking around, because there was no possible way that any human could edit the Matrix language up there and accomplish anything productive.
That’s part of my point. Most people just don’t know.
That’s like telling someone to just tune their carburator.I mean carburetor tuning is a must-have skill for absolutely anyone who has one. Otherwise you can never be sure that you are getting an ideal fuel-air mixture, and the ratio changes over time with the temperature, humidity, seasons, etc. Really, it’s irresponsible to not know how to do this if you have a car with a carburetor.
Have you met… Anyone?
deleted by creator
LMFAO, I’m actually dying over here. 😂
Brake line bleeding is a must-have skill for anyone with brakes. Otherwise you can never be sure not to have air in the brake lines. Really it’s irresponsible not to know how to do this if you have a vehicle with idraulic brakes.
Or you can get your mechanic to do it. It’s not like brakes get air bubbles during normal operation, it’s only a risk when working on the brakes in any other way
(Was your comment a poke at the previous one, pointing out that one doesn’t really need those skills? If so I think it’s reasonable for a person with a carburettor vehicle to learn how to tune it, as the skills are becoming rare)
Being able to adjust your sarcasm detector is a must-have skill. Sarcasm levels fluctuate wildly depending on platform, community, season, and topic. Otherwise you can never know if you’re making an ass of yourself when replying to other comments. Really, it’s irresponsible to partake in social media without a finely tuned sarcasm detector.
I take it you missed my bracketed comment acknowledging it was probably sarcastic.
inb4 you get an indignant reply suggesting that carburetor tuning is a must-have skill for absolutely anyone who owns anything that has one
LOL, wait, is it copypasta or does that guy just post that a lot?
It is now.
deleted by creator
And ironic that OP doesn’t share how to clean them.
Remove everything after the question mark.
This may work for sharing links to static content, but it is terrible advice for anything interactive. That removes all URL params and will break lots of interactive sites.
I’m not responsible for their shite code
deleted by creator
That’s just how http requests work though. It’s not their code it’s…the internet
If your url for a single item is a paragraph long - often repeating itself - and including shit that can be handled by css that is absolutely shit code. Temu is a particularly batshit example of this.
Ok but that isn’t the most common reason for url params
No, absolutely everything has to be a separate URL!
/s
Oh god could you imagine? Combinatorial explosion
What would be considered interactive vs static? How would I explain that to someone, for example?
Try it on a Google search results page
Most things you share will be static. These are things like news articles and webcomics where the output of the page is always the same no matter what you do. Things like google searches or YouTube links that are different depending on some way you interact with the site are dynamic. If you search for “apples” in google you’ll get different results than if you search for “oranges.” If you share the apple search with someone, your apple text will be coded as a parameter after the ?. If you strip that off they’d go to google.com and not see any apples. Trackers and other surveillance tools are also captured in the query params so for dynamic content it can be tricky to know which params to remove and which to keep. For static content you can just remove them all because the content doesn’t change based on the params you pass it
Very helpful, thank you
Like a YouTube link with a timecode, for example
On YouTube links, delete anything after the ?
Someone post the next website
That’s terrible advice, you’d just be left with
You need the “?v=” and the jumble of letters immediately after.
For example: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
That’s terrible advice, […]
Is it really? It reliably protects people from all the garbage content on youtube.
They’re talking about the query param that gets added when using the Share button: https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=dwX01vG-EivlOoYe - the ?si=… should be removed.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=dwX01vG-EivlOoYe
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
That shit is so annoying and they just started to add it.
Wait shit you’re right. I’m too used to the mobile links that have the ID after the slash
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Now that is even better! That is clean! :-D
XcQ, link stays blue
already too much work for normies
I have memorized this link so I know what is rickroll without opening it.
remove random URL query parameters and make sure that the content of the site does not change.
also kinda common sense if you know anything about urls
Because I don’t expect the target audience to be here in /c/privacy
You don’t think anyone is here to learn how to be more private on the Internet? You just expect everyone to already know everything
Look, the point is that I’ve tried explaining it to friends and family and whoever want (and don’t want) to listen.
This post is a rant / wishful thinking as stated as being so, I’m not in the mood of explaining everything again. I’ve done that in my personal blog, etc.
Well, that’s plain ignorant. But you do you.
deleted by creator
Rants are rants, that’s fine imo
How so? This is a rant post, I’m not trying to present it differently.
You’re good, no worries. You created a lot of dialog, and most of it is helpful. I’m not complaining.
Thanks. Looking back, maybe I should’ve at least explained about it a little more. At the time I just wanted to blow off some steam.
I could have worded my response better myself.
I’m looking forward to your next rant, tbh
No but that’s what the comments are for. I share if the discussion is relevant.
Don’t worry mate. I’ve never heard the term but I knew exactly what you meant. I cleaned a url earlier today for Lemmy.
Because it’s different for every website.
I mean, you can just install ClearURLs on Firefox for both desktop and Android and it will cover 99% of cases completely automatically without any technical knowledge.
There’s a lot of common patterns, but you have to understand how URLs work. You have to recognize which URL parameters are tracking ones or even just might be tracking. And that means you have to know how they work and that takes a moment.
In brief, URL parameters start after a ? in the URL and are formatted like key1=values&key2=value2. You can’t usually remove all parameters because not all are tracking. To further complicate things, URLs can also have an anchor starting with a # character which will be after the URL parameters. You often don’t want to remove that (though theoretically the anchor could in fact contain tracking details).
It’s often trial and error to see which parameters you can remove. I do this a lot since I write a lot of technical documentation. Clean URLs make the documentation more compact and less likely to break. It’s not just tracking stuff, but sometimes you need to remove temporal data that makes a page display data from a specific time when you want it to just default to the current time (etc).
That’s why I always install ClearURLs on my family members computers
Thank you for the suggestion. Downloaded
Great extension and good recommend
deleted by creator
You’re right
deleted by creator
This would be a good feature add to Lemmy. Clean pre-post.
Good reminder, I’d never considered that 😅 So why did lots of reddit subs discourage the use of URL shorteners? Was this just standard Reddit badness?
Because url shorteners can be used to hide affiliate links or even malicious URLs.
The OCD part of me really wants to clean up those URLs simply because the link becomes a massive novella of garbage that’s harder to read than Yu-Gi-Oh card text.
If you get them to install ClearUrls in their browser (Firefox, not Firefox), they can copy/paste URLs directly from their URL bar and the URL will be clean with no extra effort.
I keep it enabled in all my browser profiles pretty much always
If you use ublock origin, I find add-ons such as ClearURLs to be no longer necessary.
You can just add url tracking filter like this one maintained by adguard to ublock origin: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_17_TrackParam/filter.txt
For more tech-savvy users, sure. But I thought you were looking for a way for less technical users to share scrubbed URLs. You’re not going to get the less technical users out there who share URLs to add a URL tracking filter list to uBlock Origin, but getting them to install ClearURLs is within the realm of possibility.
I didn’t remember it well, but after checking it again, the list is actually included in the default filter list. It just needed to be activated if it hasn’t. I don’t remember the default behavior.
How do I use this filter?
I just double checked, it should be included in the default filter list.
https://i.imgur.com/uKmWh0L.jpg
You just need to activate it.
For me this doesn’t seem to clean URLs though, it just blocks them and makes me type in the link manually.
Is there a way around this?
I also use that one, on both my desktop and Android (I use Firefox dev, so I can use whatever addons I want). It does break some sites like banking and unique login URLs and the addon doesn’t have any whitelist feature. So sometimes it goes disabled for a while without me noticing.
Yeah, some high-tracking sites do break, and I’ll need to turn it off temporarily. If ClearUrls breaks a site, it means that the site baked tracking into the functional features of the site itself (which, besides being terrifying, violates GDPR).
It’s not necessarily tracking (for information anyway) though. For example, Plex Desktop app uses unique links to make the login possible via a browser. Some payment breaks because the bank requires an E-ID verification to make bigger purchases, and it happens to do that in a way that looks weird to a dumb add-on.
People barely know what a browser is, you cant expect them to know what an url is, let alone what clearing it is
It’s not just browser though, sharing links from apps also generate these URLs. A lot of people then share these links through chat apps.
I do realize that most people are not aware of it, that’s why I said this is more of a rant. Just want to vent to fellow privacy minded people.
People generally don’t care (I myself am not at the level of this community). It also involves enough technical know-how that most people won’t care. It’s like asking people to use a CLI, not going to happen. I’m pretty sure I’m one of the few people who still C&P URLs to share, most people hit a “Share” button.
You’re both right: most people don’t know what any of this means, but also people who know often don’t care. In my group of friends there are 2 programmers, they perfectly understand this yet they still share links full of trackers in the group chat.
My strategy is to friendly scold them (a programmer should know better) and in the same message share the same link without tracking rubbish. This way my non-technical friends can also see how short the same link can become.
Yea, I do it less for privacy reasons, and more for tidiness. Tracking parameters can be so unwieldly nowadays. Something that’s 30-40 characters long can balloon to 200-300 characters.
I care about this also. I used to clean them up, but what I’ve started doing is adding and replacing parts of the share id. And I’ll usually put something stupid in there like “booger”, just to screw up their tracking data.
