this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/8834978

No need to remove the URL tracking parameters manually. πŸ₯³

Firefox copy link without site tracking

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[–] [email protected] 131 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The people on Lemmy convinced me to switch from Chrome to Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago

One of us. One of us.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Next step is switching from socks to knee socks.

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

This is already moving fast

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Firefox is just that browser. Nothing beats it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

You're one step closer to joining the Librewolf club!

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (5 children)

What this has done for me has highlighted how many things are tracker me and how badly those things are designed because they don't fail gracefully.

I had a telehealth visit link today that broke using this feature. So that's nice to know. My virtual doctors appointments are being tracked by a third party.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 β€œtracking 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 β€œreset your password” email link.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

So click the regular copy button instead?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 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 1 year 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.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Umm, your telehealth link was basically a one time password to log you in/authenticate you.

This feature is for browsing the web where you shouldn’t have to identify yourself to visit a blog about Ravens. If you’re visiting your bank, a service you already use, etc, then the unique url was more for them to confirm it’s you because only you have that unique url.

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

This is a good step forward for privacy. However, how it’ll handle data embedded in the URL like MVC?

Also, if it does work well, it’s a matter of time until developers find a way to get around it and probably enhance and increase data collected in the process.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago

Awesome. I hate having to manually remove that crap.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Hell yes finally

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Chrome can get fucked.

Thanks Mozilla

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I just used this and it was awesome. Just in case you were wondering.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nice! I’ve been using the clean links app on ios but this will eliminate a step.

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

I've added that plugin on Firefox and Firefox for Android. It makes chat messages so much more legible.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I really hope the ctrl-c shortcut defaults to that

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

As much as I like this idea in theory, in practice I would actually be pretty annoyed if ctrl+c did anything other than copy the currently selected text. I would like a keyboard shortcut, though.

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

That should be an option for sure!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hell yeah! Normally I try to do this manually, so this is a useful feature for me

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why wouldn't this simply be default behavior, and then they could add a "Copy link with tracking" menu item?

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

It might become the default a little later on, they want to make sure it works ok first as an experimental feature before pushing it as a default would be my guess.

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

I do that manually. In about 1 out of 10, what looks like tracking stuff is actually needed for the link to work. So I'd expect that copy without site tracking option to not work 100% of the time.

[–] derpgon 3 points 1 year ago

Probably just removes known tracking GET parameters like utm_*. Just from a parameter name and content it is impossble to infer the use.

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

I love Firefox it is a great browser and this is nice to have built in now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is this on Android yet? If yes, how do I use it, don't see an option

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Not on Android yet. In the meantime, I would just use the Clear URLs extension.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

~~These things also all strip off the tokens which make gift links work~~

Edit looks like I was wrong on this

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did you confirm this? I tried a handful of different links, and it retained certain necessary parameters. Might depend on the link and how Firefox reads the link. Guessing it's using regex.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tested New York Times, Bloomberg, Washington Post, and Nature, and they seemed to work (unlike the one built-in on Mastodon, which fails on all of those)

It however did not however strip all the tracking parameters - some of the stuff indicating that a link was shared by an Android user from the New York Times didn't get stripped off.

Eg: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/magazine/punk-museum-las-vegas.html?unlocked_article_code=1.CE0.8TqC.QzHPUSPMsy_W&smid=nytcore-android-share

kept the smid=nytcore-android-share

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If there was a form to report exactly that or edit the list. The base of regexes needs a lot of rules unique to domains to be effective, like an adblock. And they obv put the most popular first.

[–] thejodie 5 points 1 year ago

I saw it earlier. When I tried it, it still kept the ?utm=blah&rel=blargh stuff on the URL from FB. πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

URL query string is only one way to pass variables. each has drawbacks https://stackoverflow.com/questions/597700/what-is-the-best-alternative-for-querystring

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Firefox, or Mozilla, continues to be the only browser (at least among the biggies) that's for the users, not the trackers and marketers.

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

I tried it and the link didn't work. Anyone else have issues?

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

Sausage link.

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

Yeah it only worked sometimes for me, it'll probably get better with time

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thank goodness. I hate trying to copy share links and they got a whole paragraph of tracking BS. Even YouTube started to add that.