728

I wish more people clean URLs before sharing it to others. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by narwhal@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

172 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 280 points 9 months ago

Friends and family don't know what cleaning a URL means. Nobody does.

[-] StereoTrespasser@lemmy.world 101 points 9 months ago

And ironic that OP doesn't share how to clean them.

[-] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 23 points 9 months ago

Because it's different for every website.

[-] CoderKat@lemm.ee 16 points 9 months ago

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).

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (42 replies)

[-] mo_ztt@lemmy.world 54 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 35 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That's part of my point. Most people just don't know.
That's like telling someone to just tune their carburator.

[-] pixelscript@lemmy.ml 16 points 9 months ago

inb4 you get an indignant reply suggesting that carburetor tuning is a must-have skill for absolutely anyone who owns anything that has one

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] Yearly1845@reddthat.com 14 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] Damage@slrpnk.net 9 points 9 months ago

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.

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] otl@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 9 months ago

They don't necessarily need to; hopefully we can help people install uBlock Origin which removes tracking query parameters from URLs. See privacy.txt

load more comments (6 replies)

[-] otl@lemmy.sdf.org 100 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Thankfully uBlock Origin removes those parameters for us. The default filters include a whole bunch of removeparam filters; 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 :)

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 50 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

To be honest 99% of people, certainly including me, probably don't recognize tracking elements in a URL unless they're like affiliate links.

[-] EddoWagt@feddit.nl 13 points 9 months ago

Pretty much all junk which isn't human readable is tracking info

load more comments (5 replies)

[-] Gsus4@feddit.nl 13 points 9 months ago

If people were really good at removing that info, they'd probably create a unique hash including all that data that we wouldn't be able to edit.

[-] gothicdecadence@lemm.ee 8 points 9 months ago

I mean, I've seen companies start shortening links with the tracking info inside it. Amazon and Spotify are ones I see frequently

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] streetfestival@lemmy.ca 41 points 9 months ago

Phones and chrome are designed to prevent people from noticing that they're being tracked and helping big tech track others

[-] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 37 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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: lord-bezos-amused product links are a major offender here.

[-] over_clox@lemmy.world 29 points 9 months ago

Indeed. I use Léon on Android, very straightforward, open source, and easy to install and configure...

https://github.com/svenjacobs/leon

[-] narwhal@lemmy.ml 25 points 9 months ago

Nice. I personally prefer using this one: https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 29 points 9 months ago

Agreed. Recently youtube started adding tracking parameters (?si=) to their share links. I always clean them up.

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 27 points 9 months ago

This would be a good feature add to Lemmy. Clean pre-post.

[-] variants@possumpat.io 24 points 9 months ago

Yeah I always mention it when people send a link with all the extra stuff, how you can usually delete everything past the question mark

[-] narwhal@lemmy.ml 22 points 9 months ago

Some apps are hiding it behind shortened URLs. So it looks clean, but if you expand it, then oh boy.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 23 points 9 months ago

People barely know what a browser is, you cant expect them to know what an url is, let alone what clearing it is

[-] HidingCat@kbin.social 13 points 9 months ago

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.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] sovietknuckles@hexbear.net 22 points 9 months ago

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

load more comments (9 replies)

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/master/LegitimateURLShortener.txt

Add that to people you know Ublock lists

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] CCPIsBased@thelemmy.club 15 points 8 months ago

I wish websites would clean their URLs

[-] Saff@lemmy.ml 15 points 9 months ago

Interesting, I never really thought about this before. I wonder if there’s a clipboard manager that does this automatically?

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee 14 points 9 months ago

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

[-] Clbull@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] Kushan@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

I do this because I hate super long URL's, but is this actually a problem for privacy? Does it not actually fuck with the tracking because now two separate people have got the same tracking Params? (Genuine question).

[-] DrM@feddit.de 27 points 9 months ago

Nope. It's a nightmare. The ad company now knows that you are friends or family

load more comments (7 replies)

[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 12 points 9 months ago

I try to do it. Mainly i see a lot of ?utm_source shit and kill it.

[-] netchami@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago

On Android, LinkSheet supports cleaning URLs. It's an awesome tool in general.

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] Rengoku@lemm.ee 11 points 8 months ago

Filter cleaner should be built into the browser.

load more comments

this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023

728 points (96.9% liked)

Privacy

29814 readers

791 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS