Why YSK: Trackers don’t do good for anyone except the platform, and they’re not necessary to view the content in the URL.
It’s courteous to not subject the recipient (most likely your friends and family) to this tracking. You’re already sending them to the platform, which is tracking them in other ways. But you can help reduce that tracking by removing everything after the ampersand in the URL. Here are some examples.
Twitter example
URL: https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937?s=20
The s=20 is a Twitter-specific parameter to show that the tweet was copied from the web app. s=46 is iOS, and I can’t remember what Android’s code is. This is a relatively clean link, but there are some links that’ll concatenate unique identifiers, like: https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937?s=20&t=Fn47fnSDJUD74bd9.
In this case, you’ll notice there’s also a &t= parameter, which is a unique identifier to the person who shared it.
The only part of the URL you need is https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937.
Instagram example:
URL: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzP877du2EB/?igshid=MzRlODCFWFlZA==
The only part of the URL you need is https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzP877du2EB.
TikTok example
You’ll notice TikTok’s is a lot more readable in terms of what the URL contains.
The is_from_webapp parameter is self-explanatory, as is the sender_device, and then there’s the identifier that’s unique to you. In this case, 7302915057791436331.
The only part of the URL you need is https://www.tiktok.com/@inthepaintcrew/video/7301348328602717482.
The best route1 would be to use privacy-respecting frontends, but if you don’t, simply deleting everything after the ampersand goes a long way.
1The best route would actually be to not use/reward platforms that are literally destroying humanity, but we’re not there yet, so… in the meantime, let’s just try to decrease the tracking and stop subjecting our friends and family to it as much as possible.
Tldr, anything after a ‘?’ In a url is unnecessary.
Not always, but it’s a good rule of thumb.
It’s getting worse too. Recently I’ve noticed Reddit links from friends looking like:
reddit.com/r/example/s/1234567Which then redirects to the actual
reddit.com/r/example/post/comments/1938473I believe Spotify and Tiktok do short tracker-filled links like that too. If you’re on android, URLCheck can wrangle those links to find the actual content without the trackers. I’ve set it to intercept all clicked links so I can modify as needed.
On web / iOS, I’m not sure
I haven’t checked how reddit does this but just from the example it seems like there is no anti tracking from the use of urlcheck that you’re describing.
reddit appears to generate tracking link with a specific numeric identifier in their database, so instead of attaching a bunch of removable url parameters they instead do a lookup in their database and then redirect to the original destination.
this also means your app checking the redirect will need to fetch the url to determine the destination, which means their tracking still works just fine.
edit: a word
I’ve been meaning to look into how the URL expansion works. If it happened on the device then I guess it doesn’t help much, but if it happens elsewhere it might fix the tracking?
It might also limit how much identifying information is attached to it. If the original link opens in my app, then they can tie accounts together. If it’s wrangled by a third party app, then I open the clean link, they just get my IP address
No, this applies to these specific parameters. Removing question marks and ampersands from urls will often break the pages if you don’t know what you’re doing or don’t know what the parameters are for.
I use this installable web app for cleaning extra parameters from links - https://linkcleaner.app/
Adds a share target to Android once you install it as well, makes it easy to send links to. Open source too!
That sounds useful. Although I always fix them, I do get tired of squinting at urls looking for the &.
Anyone have an Android version of this?
I found URLCheck recently. It’s great!
I downloaded it, but how does it work setting it as your default browser? Doesn’t that prevent links from opening in your browser of choice? (in my case, Fennec)
Hmmm. I see a ? In that link … Tracking me much??
Jk thanks though
Downloaded btw thanks again
It’s an installable PWA, click the … Menu in Chrome browser and choose “install”. Hope this helps!
I’ve found the android app URLCheck to be useful for this. You set it as your default Web browser and it lets you check for redirects before you open the link
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*uBlock Origin
What i do when sharing from an app would be to use a url cleaner app first and then share the cleaned link.
This is the app i use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.svenjacobs.app.leon
Came here for this
I searched up this and am pasting it in again to get rid of the tracking:
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/pmmG6z4wqO4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Thank you!
Good bot
Just to add, the part of the URL that goes like “/foo/bar/123/article/whatever_blah_blah” is called the “path” and the part that looks like “?foo=bar&t=12345&flavor=chocolate&priceInCents=350&etc=etc” is called the “query string”.
Lemmy does not. So, just dump these other social media scams.
Google search does it too. Hangouts used to. Not sure about Messages and other Google services.
Fuck Google AMP as well.
Even Wikipedia does it. I think it’s to see what platforms people are using it on
Keep in mind, there are many valid reasons for tracking or things that can be utilized to track or fingerprint you. I however feel there’s no transparency, there is often no basis for trust for these websites and I feel they share/sell data with reckless abandon so it is from that angle I approach issues like these from.
Oh for sure, I don’t mind it at all that Wikipedia puts a referrer in the end to indicate what platform the link is shared from. Of course that’s far cry from proper tracking and whatnot.
does anybody bother with blocking javascript anymore, like with noscript.net on firefox?
Im using uBlock (Medium Mode) and JShelter (Strict Mode). It’s an awesome combination, mixed with Firefoxs already existing anti tracking and resist fingerprint setting (default on Librewolf)
NoScript isn’t very popular anymore since it breaks many Webpages. Only exception is Tor, which comes with NoScript by default. Also there’s uBlock, uMatrix, LibreJS and many more to block scripts nowadays
noscript breaks webpages on purpose, because it blocks javascript
Obviously. That’s why not many poeple use it, they just don’t care enough to handle not being able to use those websites/fix them by configuring their NoScript
let’s see it friend
Apps should just strip these for us?
Firefox does exactly that, in beta at least. When you copy a URL one of the options is to copy without trackers.
Amazon does it as well when you share an article.
The op is about social media sites, but almost every site does it. Amazon, news sites, just about anything Google, Facebook.
Shopping sites all do so they can track you across their platform even if you are not signed in. ‘You looked at (premium) Widget, then (bargain) Widget’. They will probably show (mid-priced) Widget somewhere on that page then. If you click an external link on that page it will have tracking parameters along with it.
How do we know which links would have this? What is the connection Amazon has to an article? I’m confused, I thought this meant only if you are sharing a link from a social media site.
Affiliate links I’m assuming but I’m not sure
If you want to remove parameters from urls you can use the
removeparamfilter in uBlock Origin. Documentation: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#removeparamFor example:
/?igshid=$removeparam=igshid,domain=instagram.comFor the best performance it’s recommended to make sure the parameter is included in the filter as seen above with
/?igshid, and with the domain it originated from.Filters for the examples in OPs post:
/?igshid=$removeparam=igshid,domain=instagram.com ?is_from_webapp$removeparam=is_from_webapp,domain=tiktok.com &t=$removeparam=/^amp;/,domain=x.comThere’s also a filter that removes a lot of known params: https://github.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/blob/master/LegitimateURLShortener.txt
I will add to this that UTM tracking is a little less invasive. I have gotten my boss to use UTM codes instead of full-blown tracking so we can at least capture which ads people clicked on and on which platform without capturing any personal data. As long as you pay attention to the other tags, UTM are reasonable from what I have seen in my research. Gives enough info to let the business know what is going on without letting them know who is doing it.
That said, I use ScriptSafe on Chrome and a similar one on Firefox to ban the tracking code on websites entirely (along with anything that is not 100% necessary to view the page), so even if there are codes in the URLs I open, they are never logged by the analytics services that capture it.
I suggest it to everyone. Block the scripts. It is a pain in the ass whenever you go to a new page, but you have the opportunity to see what off-domain script sources are attempting to execute and you can research the sources, then decide if you want to allow them to execute or not, and decide if you want to associate with a page before you give them much of anything. Overall, distrust google tag manager, Google Analytics, and literally anything that has “ad” in it and you get about 60% of the nasty out of the way.
Fuck cutting the snake off at the head, I for his damn balls. Seems to work too as what advertising I do see, usually while casting streams, is all over the map. I get ads for video games next to ads for hip replacements, and I smile knowing that I have ghosted them as effectively as I can without going off grid.
I search up this link that helps spread to word about getting rid of trackers:
Your link has tracking in it tho. You dont need the ?si= part
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Yup. I caught that after I clicked send. Oops
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/pmmG6z4wqO4?si=64BWjT8Slv5u3f1L
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
