this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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I believe Spotify is doing something similar.
Would be nice if social networks and messengers would automatically strip these parameters.
Eventually I think sites will customize every URL for each user.
TikTok is quite sneaky. Sharing from their mobile app, you get:
https://www.tiktok.com/t/[9digitCode]/Only by opening the URL in a browser will you see:
https://www.tiktok.com/@[user]/video/[19numerals]?_t=[alphanumericIdentifier]&_r=1…which can be sanitized.Here’s how they took it a step further too: YCombinator.
Same with Reddit, FB Messenger, Instagram, TikTok... Some of them are harder to spot, like how Reddit now goes
reddit.com/r/example/s/8913y4h93I started using URLCheck on Android and SO MANY links have some kind of tracker that you can drop and not lose any functionality. Things like Signal (and even Lemmy/Mastodon) could do something similar and throw up a little warning when it encounters a known tracker, then offer to clean the URL for you.
Another advantage is that the clean URLs are a lot more descriptive
I'm using FairEmail on Android. When tapping a link, thr app detects tracking parameters and offers to remove them. I really like that feature and wish other apps would offer something similar.
Oh that's nice! Hopefully more apps integrate that function
For example, see the link in the post body here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18dsi68/whats_going_on_with_kim_kardashian_and_taylor/
Why are you linking to reddit...
I was linking to a page where someone unknowingly used a link with a tracker, as an example of what I was talking about
Here's a screenshot if that's better
adding this list to uBlock Origin helps: https://github.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/blob/master/LegitimateURLShortener.txt
best filter maintainer ever
This list is a must.
Pretty sure TikTok does it as well
That was the first place I noticed it, thought it was really smart of them, someone would send me a meme or whatever and it would show their account at the top. Was impressed that they generate so many links, now they can see who knows who so easily