this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Firefox now supports clean URLs with the new "Copy link without site tracking" option (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
49 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/8834978

No need to remove the URL tracking parameters manually. 🥳

Firefox copy link without site tracking

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Edit, looks like Firefox is smarter than me, ignore this.

I don’t know what the link was doing, but just because FF thought it was “tracking info” does not mean it was nefarious. It could be used for authentication or security. I have not tested it, but I presume this would break a “reset your password” email link.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

So click the regular copy button instead?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'm rather certain, the way it works is that it removes parameters that are named like well-known tracking parameters. For example, most webpages use Google Analytics, so you see UTM parameters everywhere.

A "reset your password" link could theoretically use a parameter that's named utm_content, then it would presumably get removed by this feature, but I see no sane reason why one would name their password-reset parameter like that.
In general, such tracking parameters are usually named in a way that it will rarely clash with other parameters a webpage may want to use, so for example they may have a prefix like utm_.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Looking at some comments on the linked post, I think you are right, and it would probably be fine for things like a password reset. I could play around with it, but my laptop is in the other room.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh, so it's not just stripping the GET parameters? Okay, that's smarter than I was assuming

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Stripping all GET parameters would break many, many legitimate webpages. 🫠