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"Copy Link Without Site Tracking" now on ! 🙌 (media.mstdn.social)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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"Copy Link Without Site Tracking" now on @firefox ! 🙌

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Personally, I have found this feature to be too limited. I still use the ClearURLs extension, which is more effective in my experience.

However, neither one is a silver bullet. Here's an example I just took from Amazon (I blocked out some values with X's):

Original URL:
https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H/ref=XXXX?qid=XXXXXXXXXX&refinements=p_XXXXXXXXXXXXX&rps=1&s=sporting-goods&sr=XXX

Using Firefox's "copy link without site tracking" feature:
https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H/ref=XXXX?qid=XXXXXXXXXX&refinements=p_XXXXXXXXXXXXX&rps=1&s=sporting-goods

Using ClearURLs:
https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H?refinements=p_XXXXXXXXXXXXX&rps=1

The ideal, canonical URL, which no tools I'm familiar with will reliably generate:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C353845H

Longer but still fully de-personalized URL:
https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H

If anybody knows a better solution that works with a wide variety of sites, please share!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

To be honest it should not be that hard to write a browser extension that just strips away all query parameters. That's just a simple string match for the question mark and deleting everything after it.

The problems begin when sites start implementing other URL shenanigans like your /ref=XXXX? example.

The workable solution there would be to have the extension match user defined patterns for different sites.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The problem with a nuclear solution like that is that some sites use query parameters as actual query parameters. Like DuckDuckGo.

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

Yeah, though that should only be an issue if the link you're copying needs to show query results instead of a more permanent page such as a product listing or a video on YouTube.

In general, the conventions and standards are followed. But yeah, linking to search results without tracking bullshit is kind of challenging.

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