Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Google docs infects html exports with google tracking redirects. (fosstodon.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

@Joe_[email protected] wrote:

Today I found out that google docs infects html exports with spyware, no scripts, but links in your document are replaced with invisible google tracking redirects. I was using their software because a friend wanted me to work with him on a google doc, he is a pretty big fan of their software, but we were both somehow absolutely shocked that they would go that far.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can someone eli5 this please? What's going on here?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have a Google Doc that's a statblock for an RPG. It has a link to the mage armor spell, which goes directly to https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/mage-armor/.

I just downloaded that statblock as an html. Then I opened that html file. The statblock is there and it all looks pretty much the same.

But then I hover over the mage armor link and it instead goes to https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/mage-armor/&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1696552528610887&usg=AOvVaw1Wgq9wmajthwTbYmk1EmHx.

This page immediately redirects to the proper destination in a fraction of a second. Blink and you'll miss it. However, it does allow Google to track that I clicked the link, and probably associate it back to me and/or the original document.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Thanks. Got it. Could a pihole potentially block this?

Edit: nvm then you just simply couldn't open the links.

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

Afaik there are browser extensions that find and replace these kinds of tracking links with the original ones.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Oh, right. Like clearURL and certain ublock origin lists?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It's probably easy enough to write a script that will go through the generated HTML and just scrub out the Google.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So if there's only a few links, you could manually replace them?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Yes. You could probably also write a simple script that scrubs the Googles out.