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
People barely know what a browser is, you cant expect them to know what an url is, let alone what clearing it is
People generally don’t care (I myself am not at the level of this community). It also involves enough technical know-how that most people won’t care. It’s like asking people to use a CLI, not going to happen. I’m pretty sure I’m one of the few people who still C&P URLs to share, most people hit a “Share” button.
You’re both right: most people don’t know what any of this means, but also people who know often don’t care. In my group of friends there are 2 programmers, they perfectly understand this yet they still share links full of trackers in the group chat.
My strategy is to friendly scold them (a programmer should know better) and in the same message share the same link without tracking rubbish. This way my non-technical friends can also see how short the same link can become.
Yea, I do it less for privacy reasons, and more for tidiness. Tracking parameters can be so unwieldly nowadays. Something that’s 30-40 characters long can balloon to 200-300 characters.
It’s not just browser though, sharing links from apps also generate these URLs. A lot of people then share these links through chat apps.
I do realize that most people are not aware of it, that’s why I said this is more of a rant. Just want to vent to fellow privacy minded people.