No need to remove the URL tracking parameters manually. 🥳

Firefox copy link without site tracking

      • faintwhenfree@lemmus.orgEnglish
        38·
        11 months ago

        Hmm, I agree with you 100%, but power of defaults is how big companies get average consumers. Maybe Firefox should make it default with a setting to turn it on?

        A setting titled “allow copying of tracking data”, a lot of people won’t allow.

        Fight fire with fire.

        • LufyCZ@lemmy.world
          38·
          11 months ago

          This just:

          1. Encourages companies to try to work around it

          2. More importantly, possibly breaks important functionality

          • uis@lemmy.world
            121·
            11 months ago

            It’s like saying GDPR encourages companies to try work around data protection, so it should not be implemented.

            • LufyCZ@lemmy.world
              4·
              11 months ago

              It’s not like that at all.

              Links support parameters for a reason, and I promise you that the main reason isn’t tracking. They can convey important info like the language, search parameters, a specific comment, etc.

              Removing them willy-nilly by default is going to cause issue sooner or later, and then people are going to blame Firefox for “not working” and are just gonna switch to Chrome because “it just works”.

              That’s not what we want is it?

                • LufyCZ@lemmy.world
                  4·
                  11 months ago

                  Yeah but the list is hardcoded. Collisions can happen.

                  Also, since it’s hardcoded, it’s easily gameable, and it will be gamed if too many people start filtering them out.

                  It’s a good start but a bad solution overall

    • HiramFromTheChi@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      23·
      11 months ago

      Or at least the option to make it the default. I could see some situations where someone may want to test a link with non-identifying parameters (like identifying the campaign source), and not wanting to have that stripped from the URL by default.

      But I get you, from a consumer perspective I’d also want it as my default.

      In the meantime, there’s ClearURLs or uBlock Origin with filter lists.

    • corbin@infosec.pub
      7·
      11 months ago

      It’s not the default because it can break links sometimes, like links that have authentication details in the parameters.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
      6·
      11 months ago

      There’s an addon I use for the Android version that does this by default.

      It does miss some queryparams though but it dramatically reduces the URL size for the big offending sites.

    • Meldrik@lemmy.wtf
      5·
      11 months ago

      Doesn’t it just clean up the link or does Firefox actually know which part of the link to remove?

          • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            Looks like it has a list of global and site specific parameters that it is safe to remove.

          • bitwolf@lemmy.one
            2·
            11 months ago

            Generally, most are variables prefixed with utm_

            They likely built an index from most of the Analytics services also.

          • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            22·
            11 months ago

            I think it’s a combination of things, a basic approach of removing the query string (after the question mark) with exceptions for different sites that might need some of the query string.

    • akilou@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      11 months ago

      But default is putting your cursor in the address bar and hitting ctrl-c. How would Firefox clean it like that?

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 months ago

        On android anyway, that’s an interceptable action, and you can also monitor and alter the clipboard.

        So they could either alter what gets copied before its copied, or scan the copied item after it’d copied and alter it.

      • Euphoma@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        If it removes the tracking from the link before the page loads, it could work. So it would already be clean when you copy it.

  • speaker_hat@lemmy.one
    11·
    11 months ago

    I’m curious whether this sweet feature alone will decrease data greedy websites revenue in $ millions

      • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        It does look like a really good app and idea, but I’m wondering if it’s really necessary on mobile devices. Usually, I don’t go around clicking on all kinds of links I shouldn’t, so I’m wondering what exact purpose it accomplishes. Genuinely looking for input here.

        • HiramFromTheChi@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          4·
          11 months ago

          If anything, URLCheck is even more necessary on mobile devices, particularly iOS where Firefox is just reskinned Safari. On Firefox for Android, you could install the ClearURLs extension, or use uBlock Origin filter lists.

          With that said, there are other use cases. For example: Friends or family might share URLs from social media. They often contain unique identifiers that you can strip before clicking the link by using URLCheck.

          More on this here: https://a.lemmy.world/lemmy.world/post/8443034

          • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zipEnglish
            2·
            11 months ago

            Good points. I was under the impression, though, that the extension doesn’t exist for mobile Firefox yet.

        • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.one
          3·
          11 months ago

          It prevents apps from opening links in your browser directly, since they have to go through URLCheck first. Let’s say you click a link in your email, and instead it opens a “google.com/url?q=https://amazon.com” or a “safelinks.outlook.com/?url=…” instead of just taking you to Amazon.com. URLCheck will get rid of the unnecessary redirection and allow you to go directly to the site.

          Adding onto that, my pet peeve with email links is them showing you a link that says Amazon.com, but then you go to click the link it opens a bunch of email tracking links before finally taking you to Amazon.com. With URLCheck you can actually stop these links from opening, and go to the website directly in the browser yourself.

          If you’re familiar with that issue that popped up regarding “.zip” domain names, and how they can be engineered to look like an official URL, this is a non issue as you’ll get a warning if any link contains malicious unicode characters that could be mistaken for something else

          Also, if you have multiple apps that can handle a link (maybe different youtube apps like libretube, newpipe, grayjay), you can pick which one to open after clicking a link. Android does have a stock app picker, but it’s very easy to mistakenly set an app as default.

          Android apps can also track what apps triggered them to open - URLCheck can mask this, and even set some advanced flags for how the link handler app should be opened.

          To be honest after using it for a while, I really wish there was something similar available for desktop

    • corbin@infosec.pub
      1·
      11 months ago

      On Android you can install LinkCleaner as a PWA using a chromium browser, it will show up as an option when sharing a link from Firefox or any other app.

  • kratoz29@lemm.eeEnglish
    8·
    11 months ago

    Can someone ELI5 what is the difference with normal link sharing?

    Does it change for the end user something or what? I ask because I almost never share stuff from my browsers, but I do from some apps such as social media or Sync for Lemmy/Voyager.

    • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      11·
      11 months ago

      Generally a link tells a browser where to find something on the Web, but you can stuff it with additional information so that when a server receives a request for that something, it will know how the browser got that link.

      This feature strip’s out that additional information.

  • RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml
    8·
    11 months ago

    Is there an about:config setting to make this the default action or are we gonna have to be patient for that?

    • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
      2·
      11 months ago

      Sucks, but they do this periodically yes. Google affiliation is a good revenue stream for them.

    • Contend6248@feddit.de
      1·
      11 months ago

      Did you remove it or just switched the default to a different one?

      I think it getting added again might happen in updates, if they change defaults that’s a whole other beast

      Switching is enough for me and i didn’t had any weird behavior since years, beside the fullscreen VPN ad they did once

  • lapommedeterre@lemmy.world
    3·
    11 months ago

    Semi-off-topic, but is there anything like a smarter clipboard on Android that can remove tracking details on paste (would be different from a plain paste)?

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    Great for desktop/laptop, but I’m waiting for them to release it on mobile as well. At the very least, if they have, Mull hasn’t added it yet.

      • sfgifz@lemmy.world
        8·
        11 months ago

        Indeed, but it’s true - Brave did bring this feature long ago. It’s a good thing for us, let multiple browsers try to one up each other on privacy focused features.

        • gila@lemm.ee
          4·
          11 months ago

          That’s true, this was one thing that was slightly annoying when I made the move from brave to Firefox. But I mean, I wouldn’t really characterise this as a reliable security feature. If you don’t manually check your URL before hitting return anyway, you’re going to be less secure than without the feature

      • pixelscript@lemmy.mlEnglish
        16·
        11 months ago

        Pretty sure they are asking, “Why would I ever want the tracking copied, why is this relegated to a bespoke option instead of being the default behavior?”

        • WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world
          14·
          11 months ago

          I think it’s good to have a normal copy along with this remove tracking one. In case for some reason removing tracking messes something up with the link and makes it not work. It’s always nice to have options rather than just doing it automatically.

          • andyMFK@reddthat.com
            41·
            11 months ago

            agree with you about having options, but swap it around. have copy without trackers be “copy link”, and then have an option “copy link with trackers”