PSA: How to remove tracking info from links you share

[sonia]

In most article and blog post links these days, everything after the '?' is tracking info that's not needed to reach the web page. If you have an extra minute when you share links, it's great to crop off the '?' and everything after it to avoid sending any extra tracking info to Facebook, etc. It helps to test your edited link just in case you removed something that's required.

For example: fbclid is the Facebook tracking id. Any link you click on Facebook will have this added onto it. This link works just as well ending in .pdf .

https://sharedsystems.dhsoha.state.or.us/DHSForms/Served/le2342F.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0Z7Q1NZX1psnme_OHpActjW4O684ooeCSktBNeJwZntWbcj5KasReymcA

The clipped version: https://sharedsystems.dhsoha.state.or.us/DHSForms/Served/le2342F.pdf

And this one says it's via the bylinefacebookbutton. Again you can cut everything starting with the '?'.

https://theconversation.com/masks-help-stop-the-spread-of-coronavirus-the-science-is-simple-and-im-one-of-100-experts-urging-governors-to-require-public-mask-wearing-138507?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=bylinefacebookbutton&fbclid=IwAR26rYQeU4nqPgx7p4OV4Jdgt-QvIdMDPNHA8W34_zaERlghYe4zPPrp79s

The clipped version: https://theconversation.com/masks-help-stop-the-spread-of-coronavirus-the-science-is-simple-and-im-one-of-100-experts-urging-governors-to-require-public-mask-wearing-138507

For youtube, you need to keep ?v=blahblah (the code for the video you want), but you can almost always remove everything starting with '&' after that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDqwacSe7O0&feature=youtu.be

The clipped version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDqwacSe7O0

After a while, you'll start to recognize the tracking keywords, like 'utm_source', etc., and strip them off with confidence!

ETA: more info in comments

Comments

[suncat]

Thanks! Saved this.

[sonia]

So glad it's useful!

[jesse_the_k]

Brilliant! I’ve stumbled around doing this, and now I have guidance.

Is the question mark always first, followed by ampersand elements?

[sonia]

Yes, that's right. The format is webpage_address?keyword1=value1&keyword2=value2&keyword_n=value_n . A single '?' to start the keyword list, and then an '&' between each keyword=value pair if there is more than one.

Happy to answer more questions!

[asakiyume]

*very* interesting and useful--thank you!

[sonia]

You're welcome! :-)

[silveradept]

Thank you for this. I've been trimming links for so long now that I forgot others might not know to do so. I have found that some places, even when you have an untracked link, when they serve you the web page, they will append tracking data to it, so if you want to further share the link, you'll have to trim it again for your own followers.

[sonia]

Good point about the sneaky additional tracking!

And retroactive appreciation to you for trimming the thousands of links I've seen on your link collections. I wasn't thinking about it either, until I was seeing untrimmed links shared in several places.

[marahmarie]

Another point, as I see this done on Dreamwidth, as well: when you post a tracked link a lot of us who can read URL tracking can just look at the tracked URL and see a) where it came from, like which website, b) if it was sent to your email, c) if it was from a newsletter you read, etc. This is an invasion of privacy many DWers don't suspect they're perpetuating upon themselves, so yeah, it pays to trim those links.

[sonia]

Good point, thanks!