You are sharing URLs with Tracking Links. Please stop.
In the nightmare world of Orwell’s 1984, everything you did was monitored. Guess what? Everything you do on the web right now actually is monitored. And often re-monitored. You’ve probably shared a URL or “link” to a web page or social post that you liked and thought that a friend would like. You probably didn’t think about all the noise at the end of the URL. Some of that noise is there to remove what’s left of your online privacy!
First, a quick review. A URL consists of the following parts:
- A protocol (usually https, though the insecure http is still recognized, and there are others, such as ftp for file transfers);
- a colon (“:”)
- Two redundant slashes which serve absolutely no purpose and for which web creator Tim Berners-Lee has apologized;
- A host name (such as mumble.com, sometimes with a now-redundant and useless “www.” at the front);
- A “path” which consists of some number of slashes and filename parts;
- Optionally, a question mark “?” followed by a “parameter” or “name=value” pair, like name=ian;
- If there are more parameters, they are preceded by an ampersand “&” instead of a “?”
For example, I had followed a link from a Facebook post to an ArsTechnica posting on the history of Norse settlement in Newfoundland, Canada. I hit Share, and my email program popped this up in the body of the message (all one line; may display as multiple lines):
There is one name-value pair, fbclid=IwAR… You can guess that the fb in fbclid stands for FaceBook, that the id stands for identifier, and that it’s a tracking link. I’ve modified the Facebook link by replacing several parts of it with FAKE to prevent it from actually working as a tracking link.
Because that parameter is only used for tracking where the link came from, the link will work just fine without it. So I stripped off the “?” and everything after it, leaving just this:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/new-data-may-extend-norse-occupancy-in-north-america/
Of course the link still works, but now ArsTechnica doesn’t have to pay a per-click fee to Facebook, since they are no longer misled into thinking that Facebook was the source of this particular referral. More importantly for privacy, neither ArsTechnica nor Facebook can be made aware that the recipient is my friend on Facebook.
Let that sink in. Every time you forward a link with tracking info to a friend, you may be helping the tech giants build a map of your social network that goes beyond what they already have. Think about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, made possible by following social links. Now you see why this matters.
Here’s another typical example of a URL with tracking links:
This link has four parameters, all beginning with “utm_” (which stands for Urchin Tracking Module, Urchin being the predecessor of Google Analytics). Outbrain is a widely-used link tracking site. The link will work without them:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/explore/true-north-carbon-free-what-arctic-tells-us-about-climate-change
A third and final example: If you search for my Java Cookbook on Amazon, the link they present is: https://www.amazon.com/Java-Cookbook-Solutions-Examples-Developers-ebook/dp/B00L9IVLHI/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=java+cookbook+darwin&qid=1563650390&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Pretty sure that qid parameter is a tracking link of some kind. All you really need is the /dp/B00L9IVLHI part, so this gets the same page as the link above: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L9IVLHI
In short, any parameters named fbclid or gclid or utm_-anything can and should be removed from any links you share or otherwise re-use. Amazon links just need the dp and the product number. If you know any other common link formats, please share them in the comments to this article!
So, next time you need to share a link, take the time to strip the tracking parameters from the URL. Your privacy could use a break, and this will give it one. A small one maybe, but every bit helps.
