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
Friends and family don’t know what cleaning a URL means. Nobody does.
On YouTube links, delete anything after the ?
Someone post the next website
That’s terrible advice, you’d just be left with
You need the “?v=” and the jumble of letters immediately after.
For example: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Thankfully uBlock Origin removes those parameters for us.
The default filters include a whole bunch of removeparam filters; e.g. privacy.txt
See also removeparam.
Maybe you could help your friends and family install Firefox and/or uBlock Origin? Every little bit helps :)
I always just reply with the real URL.
I sometimes leave some IDs in that don’t change and seem to track me as a person so the tracking mixes them up with me if the trackers don’t discard it on client change.
If anything that just makes it easier to map your social circle. Probably even intentional to see who you share links with.
I do this because I hate super long URL’s, but is this actually a problem for privacy? Does it not actually fuck with the tracking because now two separate people have got the same tracking Params? (Genuine question).
