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
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.
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.
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?
idk, this seems like a 99 IQ strat
Brave includes “copy clean link” in the context menu in the desktop version.
I thought I was alone in my windmill-tilting on this one! Nice to see there are others who clean URLs of unnecessary querystring parameters
People barely know what a browser is, you cant expect them to know what an url is, let alone what clearing it is
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.
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.
iOS 17 is supposed to do this automatically now.
https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/08/ios-17-link-tracking-protection/
Kind of annoying they only do it in Safari in private mode, and not as a default.
Most things iOS does when it comes to Safari is annoying.
Is it? Found this setting: https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/img_1639-png.2219522/
Not sure what the default is and I don’t have iOS 17 yet.
mine was set to private only, but i’ve had ios17 since one of the early betas
Mine is set to all, but I think I might have done that and forgotten. I am not sure if this setting is also available on MacOS.
Every website these days will just hijack any link posted on their service and there’s not a whole lot you can do other than just physically typing in the intended address character by character. No one wants to do that. No one cares. And these platforms know that. That’s why they do it 🖕
I mean it takes 10 secs to hold the back key though and get rid of it
A personal gripe of mine. I can’t get any of my friends/family to care…
It needs to be and should be automatic. But it’s not in the interests of media platforms to add such functionality
Thankfully uBlock Origin removes those parameters for us. The default filters include a whole bunch of
removeparamfilters; e.g. privacy.txt See also removeparam.Maybe you could help your friends and family install Firefox and/or uBlock Origin? Every little bit helps :)
As long as they don’t link them to those links, thereby confusing them to the point of being completely turned off to the idea
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.
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.
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!
Filter cleaner should be built into the browser.
I’m with you!!
Amen.
