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 though. 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 or 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.
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.
Except when it’s not.
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 &.
deleted by creator
*uBlock Origin
Came here for this
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
If you want to remove parameters from urls you can use the
removeparamfilter in uBlock Origin.For 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.comI 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.
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!
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.
I personally use an app called URLCheck on Android (link)
Replaces your default browser handles and lets you manipulate the URL before it goes to your actual browser.
simply use this on android: https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.svenjacobs.app.leon/
I use URLCheck on Android. You make it your default web browser and you can manually or automatically have the query string removed.
I search up this link that helps spread to word about getting rid of trackers:
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.
Your link has tracking in it tho. You dont need the ?si= part
Yup. I caught that after I clicked send. Oops
YouTube has also started attaching a Share ID of sorts:
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=rzmQCXsZkblahblah
The “si” query parameter is the tracker in question.
Presumably, it has your user ID embedded in it so all your efforts to concele your identity by using anon IDs on Lemmy/Reddit/Twitter etc routing through VPNs Tor whatnot can be shattered with a single share of a YouTube video. Plus, they can track and associate users with each other based on who all opened your link.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=rzmQCXsZkblahblah
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
What if you modify the tracker, like change some letters? Could that mess up their system if many did it?
If you go that route, start collecting real ids of loads of random people and then randomly add those. If you add invalid ones, they’ll just get ignored, but with real random ones it really will fuck with their systems
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.
That’s exactly what URLCheck does on Android, acts like a middleman for links and allows you to strip tracking parameters etc, before forwarding you to another app to view the link’s contents
