cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/31187638
Earlier today I came across a Reddit comment with a link to an Instagram post. The link had
?igsh=at the end.When I clicked on the link, I got this popup. It had a name and profile photo that was different from that of the post being shared.
Join Firstname Lastname on Instagram
See photos, videos, and more from Firstname Lastname.
[ Open Instagram ]
not now
I avoid link trackers. However, I did not realize it was this bad.
To my knowledge, TikTok does the same thing and lists the name of the person that shared the link. Assuming this increases engagement, any website could enable such a feature, even on old links that you shared in the past.
You should manually remove any trackers before sharing, or use an app for it.
Yuuuup, found out the hard way that tiktok shows you when someone watches a link you sent them.
My dad loves sending me cat videos on the tiktok, he sends me the links on Facebook.
I have two tiktok accounts because I knew there was a risk that my dad would be able to find me on tiktok through contacts. My dad is a transphobe, so in order to not poke the bear I maintain a cis persona when dealing with him.
But it took him 0.3 seconds to realise that he sent his daughter a link, and then an openly transmasc account user with a similar name opened that link, and then his daughter replied to his message reacting to the link…my ears are still bringing from the phone call he made to me.
So thats how my misunderstanding of tiktok trackers outted me to my transphobic father.
(fortunately I’m a fully grown adult and can cut him out of my life if he doesn’t calm down)
I don’t remember which site this was, but I remember it being a pretty big one…
Anyway - I shared a link on reddit about 10 years ago, and I got a PM from a user addressing me by my first name telling me to delete the link.
Not only did it say who I was - the link logged people into my account.
Jesus, now that its terrifying!
What would even be the point of a link that allows you that? Like, why was it designed to do that!?
Props to that person who PM’d you the warning.
I’m so sorry you have to deal with this. And so terrified that anonymity is wiped out that easily
I tend to manually strip out anything random hash-looking from URLs. Not so much because I’m worried about identity being exposed, but because it just encourages data-mining and figuring out what causes people to post links places.
There’s some open-source app I recall on Android in F-Droid that will do this for a set of known sites, “Link Cleaner” or something.
kagis
“Leon – URL Cleaner”. I assume that this is an allusion to the movie.
https://github.com/svenjacobs/leon
I also strip off the extension that the Wikipedia app adds to indicate that Wikipedia links are from the app.
I also strip off “m.” leading URLs, like “m.wikipedia.org”, since that, by convention, forces desktop users to see a mobile version of a site, which is not normally what they want, whereas a non-.m link will still show the mobile site to mobile users.
Note that a TikTok link is un-cleanable. It will always trace back to you. Do not ever share TikTok links unless you’re willing to expose your identity to the person you’re sharing with.
LPT, delete the
?and everything after the link. For example,Becomes
https://www.ebay.com/itm/256674765393
While retaining the same product and removes your fingerprinting data.
This also applies for things like youtube, amazon, social media, etc. I have the cleanurls extension on firefox, yet it doesn’t do a good job at removing this stuff, so I often have to manually do it before sharing links.
Mind that just removing everything after the question mark can break the link, because these parameters can also do useful things.
For example, if you use the search functionality on a webpage, you’ll typically be redirected onto a URL with a parameter containing your search query.And Firefox also has this tracking parameter removal built-in these days. In the right-click menu, you can select “Copy Link Without Site Tracking”.
I cannot say, though, if this works better than CleanURLs. Because these parameters can do useful things, it’s tricky to automatically remove them without breaking links.
