cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/31187638
Earlier today I came across a Reddit comment with a link to an Instagram post. The link had
?igsh=at the end.When I clicked on the link, I got this popup. It had a name and profile photo that was different from that of the post being shared.
Join Firstname Lastname on Instagram
See photos, videos, and more from Firstname Lastname.
[ Open Instagram ]
not now
I avoid link trackers. However, I did not realize it was this bad.
To my knowledge, TikTok does the same thing and lists the name of the person that shared the link. Assuming this increases engagement, any website could enable such a feature, even on old links that you shared in the past.
You should manually remove any trackers before sharing, or use an app for it.
I tend to manually strip out anything random hash-looking from URLs. Not so much because I’m worried about identity being exposed, but because it just encourages data-mining and figuring out what causes people to post links places.
There’s some open-source app I recall on Android in F-Droid that will do this for a set of known sites, “Link Cleaner” or something.
kagis
“Leon – URL Cleaner”. I assume that this is an allusion to the movie.
https://github.com/svenjacobs/leon
I also strip off the extension that the Wikipedia app adds to indicate that Wikipedia links are from the app.
I also strip off “m.” leading URLs, like “m.wikipedia.org”, since that, by convention, forces desktop users to see a mobile version of a site, which is not normally what they want, whereas a non-.m link will still show the mobile site to mobile users.
Latest versions of Firefox offer to copy and paste URL without trackers. I am not sure how it compares to specialized tools.
How do I use this feature? I’m a Firefox user since quantum and had no idea this was a thing.
There is a Firefox addon called ClearURLs that automatically removes all of the tracking crap. It works on PC and Android.
uBlock Origin also has a filter built-in, though you have to enable it. It’s under Filter Lists > Privacy > AdGuard URL Tracking Protection
Generally anything that comes after a questionmark in a URL can be safely stripped out, though not always. The random string of characters you get after a youtu.be link is tracking, the ?t=123 is a timestamp.
YouTube has an even better example of it being problematic to strip the parameters. The original video links look like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
The thing is, the stuff after the question mark isn’t inherently bad, we just have the convention that the path (/watch) should identify a static resource on the server, whereas the stuff after the question mark is more variable or user-specific.
But YouTube is older than that convention. If YouTube got built today, that URL would look more like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch/dQw4w9WgXcQ
On the other hand, the URL of a specific search result page would still look the same, even with today’s conventions, because it doesn’t identify a static resource:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=never+gonna+give+you+up
URLCheck may be the app you’re thinking of.
Edit: the way it works, is that you set it up as your default browser. Then, whenever you hit a link, it will open up URLCheck first, and you’ll get to decide what to do with the link, strip away query parameters, and which app to open the link with.
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Setting anything as your default “browser” when it’s not a browser is only a little sus — “open” source, or no.
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Don’t share a link if you can’t find its complete “verbose” version.
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🤷🏽♂️🤞🏽
You’re the best!
I just installed it. Look at this perfectly anonymous link:
Note that a TikTok link is un-cleanable. It will always trace back to you. Do not ever share TikTok links unless you’re willing to expose your identity to the person you’re sharing with.
I think you can go find the video in an incognito tab, then grab the link from there
Specifically, you can “share” it to yourself, open that link in an incognito tab, then strip out everything but the user and video id
https://www.tiktok.com/@USERNAME/video/LONGSTRINGOFDIGITS
You have to do the same thing with Amazon a.co links I think
MANY apps currently have these unneeded tracker parameters, here’s Youtube
LPT, delete the ? and everything after the link. For example,
Becomes
https://www.ebay.com/itm/256674765393
While retaining the same product and removes your fingerprinting data.
This also applies for things like youtube, amazon, social media, etc. I have the cleanurls extension on firefox, yet it doesn’t do a good job at removing this stuff, so I often have to manually do it before sharing links.
Mind that just removing everything after the question mark can break the link, because these parameters can also do useful things.
For example, if you use the search functionality on a webpage, you’ll typically be redirected onto a URL with a parameter containing your search query.
And Firefox also has this tracking parameter removal built-in these days. In the right-click menu, you can select “Copy Link Without Site Tracking”.
I cannot say, though, if this works better than CleanURLs. Because these parameters can do useful things, it’s tricky to automatically remove them without breaking links.
The problem is that these parameters can also do useful things, i.e. removing them might break the link. There’s no inherent criteria to determine whether a parameter is used for tracking or not.
The way these extensions or Firefox’ built-in feature works, is that they check for ‘well-known’ parameters. For example, lots of URLs contain parameters starting with utm_, which is from Google Analytics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTM_parameters
As such, it’s for example unlikely that someone would build a website which uses a parameter utm_medium with a value of social, without it being used for tracking, so that gets removed.
But if someone builds a website that puts your full name into a parameter called potato, there’s just no way to automatically detect and remove that.
Yuuuup, found out the hard way that tiktok shows you when someone watches a link you sent them.
My dad loves sending me cat videos on the tiktok, he sends me the links on Facebook.
I have two tiktok accounts because I knew there was a risk that my dad would be able to find me on tiktok through contacts. My dad is a transphobe, so in order to not poke the bear I maintain a cis persona when dealing with him.
But it took him 0.3 seconds to realise that he sent his daughter a link, and then an openly transmasc account user with a similar name opened that link, and then his daughter replied to his message reacting to the link…my ears are still bringing from the phone call he made to me.
So thats how my misunderstanding of tiktok trackers outted me to my transphobic father.
(fortunately I’m a fully grown adult and can cut him out of my life if he doesn’t calm down)
I don’t remember which site this was, but I remember it being a pretty big one…
Anyway - I shared a link on reddit about 10 years ago, and I got a PM from a user addressing me by my first name telling me to delete the link.
Not only did it say who I was - the link logged people into my account.
Jesus, now that its terrifying!
What would even be the point of a link that allows you that? Like, why was it designed to do that!?
Props to that person who PM’d you the warning.
I’ve been out as queer since I was 14. I’m in my 30, he still hasn’t come around.
Given his age and health, if he’s planning too come around he’d better get on it quick, at this rate he’s dying a bigot.
I’m not waiting any more, I put my whole life on hold waiting for him to come around so I could live my life safely. If I need to cut him out of my life I will.
I appreciate they kind words, but please keep in mind mind that it’s not always smart or safe to tell a trans person to be patient. The individual will know their level of safety, and advice to be patient and understanding can in some cases case be very, very harmful.
