this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
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[–] solrize 132 points 1 week ago (28 children)

We need browser extensions to kill those tags automatically.

[–] UnpopularCrow 109 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Firefox I believe does. If you right click on a link, it says something like “copy link without tracking”. It should do away with queries in the URL, but I’m not completely sure.

https://www.trishtech.com/2024/10/how-to-disable-copy-link-without-site-tracking-in-firefox/

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This is definitely what it’s supposed to do (and a great feature) but unfortunately it doesn’t work that well. Have tried this many times, especially with Amazon links, and it seems to be a bit inconsistent in its effectiveness.

[–] UnpopularCrow 8 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

You probably also need to clear your cookies as well. I can't really see this being done only via GET

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Yeah, I cannot imagine any reason they wouldn't use cookies to track this. The moment you arrive via an affiliate link they're going to know that that's how you got to the site for that session.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

That's not going to work for links sent by text or whatever.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How do you think that would work? Like the site with the affiliate link should drop a third party cookie for gumroad? That's a pretty big requirement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

When you go to the website, it can save that cookie for the session, even if you later remove the parameter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I don't understand. Cookies and request method are two different things. You can set cookies on GET.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

If a platform gets traction and is good at removing them, then links will be more obfuscated to deal with it.

[–] solrize 4 points 1 week ago

Oh nice, that is pretty new, but will have to see if it works on those gumroad links. I have an offline script (not a browser extension, I haven't bothered figuring out how to write those) that edits urls to remove tracking and it's quite a pain, since there are dozens of sites and tracking schemes it has to know about. Also, rather than creating a pasteable url, a suitable browser extension should just rewrite the link automatically before navitation when you click on it.

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