Lately I’ve noticed some mainstream sites injection tracking links into literally every link on their site.
When I hover over it, it shows the correct link at the bottom of my browser, but if I click it or copy it, it takes me to a hijacked tracker link.
Then I can’t even get the original link without having my activity tracked.
How do I get the original link that appears at the bottom of my browser?
As Android App, you can use leon url cleaner which removes them if possible
When you hover and see the link target at the bottom that means the HTML link target is as desired, but on link interaction the website uses a JavaScript event handler to prevent default behavior (browser link navigation) and instead redirects you to their tracking.
Blocking their javascript scripts may prevent the event handler injection.
Alternatively, as a fallback, if you see the link at the bottom, copying the link via context menu should work. Depending on your browser and their implementation they may inject and replace the copy to clipboard too.
To anwer the title question:
By not using these services. They manipulate links you give them. They can do whatever they want.
Haha btw Fedilab does the same with Youtube, but using random Invidious instances. Thanks Fedilab.
There’s an extension for Firefox and maybe Chrome that should help. I think it’s called ClearURL, or something similar. It removes the trackers from the ends of URLs
EDIT: That’s assuming that it’s a legitimate tracking URL, and not something that’s been added by malware.
I don’t have an extention on FF but whenever I copy a link there’s an option to also copy clean link. I’m not home, but I believe this is associated with my search engine being SearXNG.
This is actually a rather new feature in the firefox browser unrelated to searx.
Is that feature default for vanilla firefox? Or do you need to go fiddle in settings to turn that on
It removes the trackers from the ends of URLs
These are not tracking links in the conventional sense where they append tracking data to the legitimate link. They just hijack the link that someone else posts and replace it with an entirely new tracking link with a l.facebook.com domain.
No link cleaning software I have found works because of this.
That needs to be resolved link by link by some service, and an Addon can then replace those links. Maybe you could make a browser extension that resolved every hijacked link and uploads it to a server.
This wouldnt let Facebook know more about you, but the other way around do data poisoning. You could also make a “random mode” where your browser scrolls through random feeds and does this.
Buts are unlikely as Facebook will block them. I mean I dont even know how Facebook looks as I dont have an account
Firefox can do it without an extension now
