Telling people to remove them isn’t very practical. Educating people is step 1, but step 2 is finding a browser extension or browser that scrubs the identifiers from URLs. You will inevitably forget to remove the tracker from the url if you do it manually.
PSA on privuhcy
Submitted 8 months ago by FundMECFS@quokk.au to [deleted]
https://quokk.au/static/media/posts/1d/c0/1dc08isGgni1VfK.jpeg
Comments
moseschrute@lemmy.world 8 months ago
yoriaiko@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
No no no no, keep em up, I can hack them and decrypt and do nasty things with that silly part of
codelink, to learn so much about our lovely friendship. And I promise I would never use that to harm You, really! hahahahahahahahaayoriaiko@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Oh source from newsletters? emails? oh that means You actively are using email adres, do any big spam company want validated email adres they can spam on? yeah, sure, 0.30€ each! (afaik, black market value is 100-600€ per 1000 valid addresses, just searched)
Tbh, unsure if si=Aa1Uc_fRHXC0ay85 or similars can be decrypted, or are just individual, one time identificators, never tried, but bet some do know how to pull value out of them.
Rubanski@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
This tip really doesn’t let me down, turns around and desert me
daggermoon@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Don’t some browsers do this automatically?
xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I would assume there’s an extendion/add-on for than already
matlag@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Yes, at least for Firefox:
Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
“everything after the ? Symbol can be removed without issue” is a bold statement to make. Reminds me when the TV news had a specialist telling people to look at urls before clicking and check if it ends with “.php” as that would mean it is a virus.
REDACTED@infosec.pub 8 months ago
Youtube.com/watch?v=[Video ID]
SuluBeddu@feddit.it 8 months ago
Difference being that the ? in URLs separates the resource from additional information
So unless some website decides to identify the resource in those query field (for example search results pages in a web search), you are generally safe
In any case, messaging apps will try to navigate to the site to create a caption for your message, and that can be a way to check if it works or not
rosco385@lemmy.wtf 8 months ago
umbraroze@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
There’s also Léon the URL Cleaner.
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Why is this a shitpost? It’s absolutely correct and factual.
echodot@feddit.uk 8 months ago
It is correct and factual. Unfortunately it doesn’t really explain anything. There’s plenty of situations where you wouldn’t want to delete content because they are necessary for functionality.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Must be the giant red circles and mixed fonts
Shape4985@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
There is also copy clean link option in firefox and brave
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They are called query parameters and they are used for other things as well. So you can remove the ones you see similar to these but sometimes there might be important stuff you need to get the page to load in those parameters.
bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 8 months ago
After removing them (or even if there was nothing to remove) I test out links I’m sending in a private browser window to check that they would work for other people.
MissingInteger@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Add this URL Shortener filterlist to uBlock Origin.
This removes the fast majority of these query parameters.Sarothazrom@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Can I ask how do use this? Do I just copy/paste this into the “my filters” tab in uBlock? ;
oatscoop@midwest.social 8 months ago
Go to the “Filters” tab in the dashboard. At the bottom of the list click “Import” and paste the URL ( raw.githubusercontent.com/…/LegitimateURLShortene… ) in the box. Then click “Apply” to save it.
qarbone@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I honestly couldn’t determine if it was a typo or not, but it’s not “fast” but “vast majority.”
Sidhean@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
my brain autocorrected it to “vast,” but I like “fast majority” as a phrase
the_q@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
The only way to be safe and private online is to not be online.
Medic8teMe@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
How about I just don’t use you tube? I should be ok.
CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe 8 months ago
It’s on a lot of links
Medic8teMe@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
It is and it should stop. I’m honestly almost to the point of leaving so much interneting behind so I can regain my skills at old school communication and information gathering. It must be so hard to do that now. It used to be so normal.
I already have bonked all traditional social media including for my small business for reasons like this. I went back to posters and flyers and only promoting online solely in spaces like the fed. It’s been hard but worthwhile I feel and after only about a year I am again getting more traffic. It’s just a small income source but it’s been an interesting foray into change.
NutWrench@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
This. The question marks and ampersand in youtube URLs are separators and can include your entire playlist, as well. If you just want to share the video, then everything from the first ampersand onwards can go.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Legitimate concern, called URL tracking. There’s browser extensions for that.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Add made up data to those parameters. Like source=ericsschmidtspedoisland
Muehe@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
PSA if you are worried about link parameters giving away where you came from, you should really be worried about HTTP Referrer headers, which are of course turned on by default in most browsers. Be advised turning them off may break some (parts of) certain websites, but most still work fine in my experience.
In Firefox go to about:config page and set
network.http.sendRefererHeaderto 0.TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Or change them to 127.0.0.1 and get rid of some web app firewalls and restrictions
JackbyDev@programming.dev 8 months ago
Not everything after the
?can be removed. Obvious and well known example, YouTube videos use the video as part of the query parameters (on non shortened URLs). youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQhacktheegg@programming.dev 8 months ago
Fun fact, YouTube has backwards comparability for its video links, so youtube.com/w/dQw4w9WgXcQ will go to the same video (granted, it will change format to the up to date one, but it is one way to go to a yt video without URL arguments)
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
I judge people based on whether they can understand youtube (which you should be changing to invidious or something else anyway) urls. It’s a useful and very short way to see if people have ever paid attention to repeated patterns. The moment I saw the t=XYs, I was amazed.
Memetic@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
It’s not always nefarious.
I work for a non-profit. Sometimes it’s helpful to understand the click rate on a mass message.
We don’t provide data to third parties and use a self-hosted oss analytics platform.
So I think folks should understand tracking and manage it but it’s not all bad. Just almost always bad. Really bad.
Worse: a lot of links can’t be fixed or modified since they use click-through services to obscure the destination.
Soulcreator@programming.dev 8 months ago
I’m a web developer in a marketing department and agreed UTM tags aren’t really nefarious. We generally use them to track campaigns, and to see the effectiveness of our paid campaigns. (As in how much of a return on investment did we have, are people continuing to traverse the site after hitting the landing page, etc) That said those codes generally don’t give us any info about the user other than what parts of the site you are hitting, (which we can find out through other means anyway). There are tools out there which can give us a creepy amount of data about the users on the site, but UTMs aren’t it.
Removing them when sending out links is good practice as you probably only really need a fraction of the characters in order to get to the site, so your links are cleaner, you look like less of an idiot, and ironically marketers will end up having cleaner data (I doubt you care about this, but it’s true.)
That said, if you really want to prevent sites from getting your data when browsing turning off JavaScript in your browser would probably have the biggest impact.
Tick_Dracy@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
On iOS / iPadOS , you can use a Siri Shortcut called Clean URLs.
Just share the URL with the shortcut, through the share sheet option, and your clean url is automatically copied into the clipboard.
gizmonicus@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I usually change the parameters to things like utm_source=yourmom, just for kicks.
princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Everything after the “?” symbol can be removed without issue
artiman@piefed.social 8 months ago
this isn't a shitpost this community is being dragged through the mud by non-shitposts
cley_faye@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s shitty advice masquerading as something useful and/or insightful.
Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Actually, it’s a a bit of a shitpost. Anything after the ‘?’ is an argument for the html request. Can and is used for tracking, but is also used for website functionality.
Master167@lemmy.world 8 months ago
IMO, any developer who uses URL parameters for required functionality is short sighted. They should use the path as required parameters.
Puddinghelmet@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Time to put new privacy laws in place or force politicans to do it
rumba@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Check out this cool video
Samsy@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
There are URL shortener Apps on F-Droid. Simple share the link to this app and get a short link without this privacy mess.
smiletolerantly@awful.systems 8 months ago
Make sure you choose a proper open source one, else the app might collect data as well…
CanadianCarl@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Samsy@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Yes
gerald_eliasweb@reddthat.com 8 months ago
I did not know what those were for before seeing this but I remeber seeing “source=chat_gpt” next to a link to a source in a news article and thought that it was odd.
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
That just means that the idiot writing the article got the link provided to them by chatgpt during their research. All it does is tell the website that you visited that you followed a link from the given source. They can aggregate the data from all visitors for metrics, to see where they lag behind in exposure. But they can’t associate users to each other with this method.
Unlike the “igsh” tag in instagram post/reel urls, which when opened, will immediately create a popup stating “join <user that shared the URL with you> on Instagram today!”
dan@upvote.au 8 months ago
This is kinda true but also kinda fear mongering. UTM parameters are just to track where you clicked the link from, and don’t contain anything about you personally.
ericatty@infosec.pub 8 months ago
As someone who has link tracking in our business, yes, some of the stuff after the ? isn’t nefarious tracking, like the utm mentioned above.
All the “list-unsubscribe” options you may have noticed starting about a year ago, are actually required to be there for any company that sends out any kind of email newsletter over a certain threshold. (Lists around 5k or more)
If the unsubscribe links aren’t there, with the required url-encoded parameters (along with some other requirements with DNS) the email will not be delivered to any of the majors (google, yahoo/aol, hotmail, big ISPs) and we get blocked.
The unsubscribe parameters are being tracked, yes, but we have to have them so we can unsubscribe you “in one click” We are not allowed to require you to sign in to unsubscribe you. (Not that we ever did that, but now there must be a one-click option.)
(We used to just be two clicks to unsubscribe off an encoded link. Click -> this you? If yes, click -> you are now unsubscribed. Or sign-in and manage subscriptions without an encoded link.)
Again, the point is that not all url encoded tracking is nefarious. Some of it is now required to try and minimize spam and nefarious emails.
nieminen@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I use an app called “Leon URL Cleaner” from F-Droid. Does a really good job removing tracking params, and only adds one extra step to sharing a URL.
speq@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
There’s also URLCheck:
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Most of my internetin’ is done on mobile, because I’m very rarely at my desk, and when I am, I’m normally working on school. Are there any solutions to handling this easily on mobile without having to manually erase part of the pasted link when I go to send it to someone? A few people have mentioned that’s it’s not 100% guaranteed that the anything after ? Is worthless, so I don’t know how to ensure I’m not breaking a link
LordKitsuna@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Firefox mobile has plenty of add-ons that will just remove it for you
nieminen@lemmy.world 8 months ago
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Does anyone want to talk about the “share with Facebook” and other similar social media links that track you?
No?
Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool