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

  • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
    1751·
    1 year ago

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

      • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
        159·
        1 year ago

        On YouTube links, delete anything after the ?

        Someone post the next website

        • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
          11·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
            5·
            1 year ago

            What would be considered interactive vs static? How would I explain that to someone, for example?

            • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
              7·
              1 year ago

              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

      • narwhal@lemmy.mlOP
        314·
        1 year ago

        Because I don’t expect the target audience to be here in /c/privacy

        • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
          15·
          1 year ago

          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

          • narwhal@lemmy.mlOP
            51·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
              3·
              1 year ago

              You’re good, no worries. You created a lot of dialog, and most of it is helpful. I’m not complaining.

              • narwhal@lemmy.mlOP
                4·
                1 year ago

                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.

                • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  I could have worded my response better myself.
                  I’m looking forward to your next rant, tbh

          • narwhal@lemmy.mlOP
            31·
            1 year ago

            No but that’s what the comments are for. I share if the discussion is relevant.

            • Chunk@lemmy.world
              1·
              1 year ago

              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.

    • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      1 year 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
        18·
        1 year ago

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