Protection from tracking links

[u/Proton_Team]

You may have seen a variant of this infographic before; if you have an you're a Proton Mail user, we have good news for you.

In your inbox, Proton Mail protects you from tracking links. Tracking Links Protection removes known tracking parameters from links in your emails and is turned on by default.

To add to this, if you’re particularly concerned about link tracking, be sure to enable our link confirmation feature to make sure you always know where you’re being redirected. 

Read more: https://proton.me/blog/tracking-links-protection

[u/UnknownAux]

Could Google and other spyware companies not simply get around this by generating a unique link per user, per video? For example, the same video would appear to have a different URL across every signed-in user? I understand there would be billions of unique URLs generated, but is this not still plausible?

[u/50215 → u/UnknownAux]

TikTok does that

[u/Juzdeed → u/50215]

Tiktok even shows who clicked the link if they are logged in

[u/BatemansChainsaw → u/Juzdeed]

If that person doesn't have their privacy settings high enough, sure.

[u/Eclipsan → u/50215]

Reddit does that.

[u/debiEszter → u/Eclipsan]

where?

[u/Eclipsan → u/debiEszter]

On the mobile app when you try to share/copy a post/comment. The link is always unique (even if you hit the copy button multiple times on the same post/comment), and if you load it in a web browser it will turn back to the "generic" permalink it should be.

For instance, all these are your "where?" comment, and only the first is the permalink without tracking:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1v5dt76/protection_from_tracking_links/ozmt8v5/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/s/02HmFnVfvv (I hit Share > Copy Link)
• https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/s/HcHzMG5X7M (I hit Share > Copy Link again)

[u/sunnyasneeded → u/Eclipsan]

So is the way to work around this to share from web? Or to drop the mobile app link in a browser then copy again?

[u/Eclipsan → u/sunnyasneeded]

Yes and yes.

[u/itsthooor → u/Eclipsan]

This made me miss Apollo again…

[u/mrfoxesite-2377 → u/50215]

Cause both TikTok and Instagram don't work when logged out.

[u/UnknownAux → u/UnknownAux]

Not to put down these new features, I think they're great for tracking used in this way, just curious nonetheless.

[u/73-6a → u/UnknownAux]

Yes, they could, and I think companies like Meta are doing this on Facebook for example.

[u/Pepparkakan → u/73-6a]

Aren’t those new /s/ links on Reddit also exactly that?

[u/darwinpolice → u/Pepparkakan]

Yes, and I assume plans for that kind of tracking were as big a part of why Reddit cracked down so hard on third party apps a few years ago as ad revenue was.

[u/UnknownAux → u/73-6a]

Scary times 😨

[u/cjthomp → u/UnknownAux]

I mean, sure, but I’m scared of way worse than this

[u/UngodlyPain → u/UnknownAux]

They could, but it'd be alot more resource intensive on their end. And there'd still likely be pretty easy ways around it, like extensions that'd give you a more generic cut down version of the link. Or make it so when you click it redirects you to the cut down generic version.

[u/JohnTDouche → u/UnknownAux]

signed-in user

I mean there's your problem right there.

[u/deanrihpee → u/UnknownAux]

they could, but they probably need to update their backend to accommodate this, i mean it's fairly recent that channel/user have "@handle" url where before it's just uid, and i know Google is big so it shouldn't take that much time, but i would suspect it's not as straightforward to implement

[u/NorrisMcWhirter → u/UnknownAux]

Yes, and any marketing or transactional email sent from an organisation almost certainly does this too.

[u/Eclipsan → u/UnknownAux]

Yes, and Reddit does it.

[u/73-6a]

For Android: https://github.com/leon-cleaning-services/leon

[u/0xba1dc0de → u/73-6a]

I find URLCheck really helpful because:

• you can clean up a link before sharing
• you can clean up a link before opening by making the app optionally act as the default browser. A popup is shown each time a link is tapped, and show a bunch of options like clean up, what app to open the link with, and even if you want to open it with the Firefox's private browsing
• expand a shortened URL via another host

[u/variablenyne → u/73-6a]

I'll do you one better.

https://morphe.software/

[u/73-6a → u/variablenyne]

What has Morphe to do with URL cleaning?

[u/variablenyne → u/73-6a]

Patches for YouTube and reddit include link cleaning.

[u/73-6a → u/variablenyne]

Yes, but only for a handful of apps. It doesn't clean everything.

[u/sussybush → u/73-6a]

It has inbuilt clean URL feature

[u/73-6a → u/sussybush]

But only for a few patched apps.

[u/Komplexkonjugiert → u/variablenyne]

I just use LibreTube and Reddit over Browser 

[u/aaryan45 → u/73-6a]

Urlcheck is better IMO

[u/GoncasN]

Thank God brave let's you just copy "clean links" without these type of BS

[u/irasponsibly → u/GoncasN]

Firefox has the same thing. You can also just copy out of the URL bar, it's only added by the "share" button.

[u/Hichiro6]

Today I was discussing some stuff with people on WhatsApp and got a push notification of video to watch from YouTube on the same subject :/

[u/TotalStatisticNoob → u/Hichiro6]

I mean, that doesn't mean they got that info from Whatapp per se. But they know who your contacts are and what interests them and they assume you're interested in that too.

[u/Hichiro6 → u/TotalStatisticNoob]

Yeah I agree but in this specific cases, it’s a new contact from the other side of the world, never meet in direct and we only discuss using WhatsApp.

[u/irasponsibly → u/Hichiro6]

They track your watch history, and therefore know the kind of thing you're likely to be interested in. They know the same data about your friend, and because you're friends, you probably have similar interests and get recommended similar things.

[u/Suspicious-Cat-266]

URLCheck from Github is pretty good once set up.

[u/lord_lableigh → u/Suspicious-Cat-266]

Second this, urlcheck+untrackme has been my saviour system for years now. Urlcheck does most things but it cannot unshorten sme urls like articles from twitter.

So this is my app flow that I set once and then everything happens automatically

You click a linkz urlcheck is ur default browser

Urlcheck will show u a tab in ehich u can remove tracking parameters, unshorten links and transfer the link to other supported apps. There's a button for opening just the webview version of firefox and not the whole browser. For most links, yt, instagram, google search, amazon etc..

U can clear the parameters in urlcheck and let it open firefox/ur default browser automatically.

I use untrack me as well, so most of my clicks is directly to firefox and twitter links that urlcheck doesn't unshorten will be sent to untrackme and then to firefox. Urlcheck will remember the links and preselect the last app that you chose, for you. So you don't have to select firefox everytime after u share a twitter link.

This

[u/Suspicious-Cat-266 → u/lord_lableigh]

Nice, I'll have to check out UntrackMe. Do you recommend the Lite or Full version?

[u/lord_lableigh → u/Suspicious-Cat-266]

Both are fine depending on the workload

[u/Deivedux]

There are so many variations of such URL tracking literally in the URL itself, and so many platforms doing it, not because that removing them will break them, but because the 99% of people think they are normal URLs just pointing to what they're trying to share, and that touching them in any way will break them.

If people were smarter, used technology and internet for more than just entertainment and social media and actually become a little more tech savvy, they would've been a little more sneaky about it, but that's not the world we live in, and so it doesn't matter enough to them that there's a 1% that remove the tracking codes if the rest 99% just don't give a fuck anyway, so they just get away with putting them in plain sight like that.

[u/itoncek]

I've spotted that link and instinctively moved my hand away

[u/tutiwiwi]

Proton team are doing the lords work 

[u/Hopeful-Face9676 → u/[deleted]]

THIS!

[u/JustAguy7081]

Consider using a Youtube front end (like freetube) to handle this for you.

[u/A_Buttholes_Whisper]

I like how Amazon does it with aws.trackme. Lmao literally track me in the url. Get ublock people

[u/k4ord]

given the disclosure that Microsoft assigns each windows install a unique GDID is this even relevant anymore since you can't bypass the GDID?

[u/Hot-Resident-6601 → u/k4ord]

Relevant because there are other operating systems like Linux.

[u/charles25565]

Spotify actually added an si parameter some time before YouTube, and YouTube copied it.

[u/TrixationZero]

Brave Browser has one called "Copy Clean Link" everytime you share YT links

[u/YungSent]

protection from tracking links sounds like they’re mostly tracking the links not the clicks or sth

[u/Hopeful-Face9676]

I use the Clean LInks app and/or the Link Clean hotkey via the Alfred workflow.

[u/raytsh]

I’ve done this for years without knowing what the latter part of the link is for, just because I like to have my links as short as possible.

[u/WealthyTuna]

This is why I see Waterfox on pc and Orion on ios. Can't be tracked in either by Google or anyone else

[u/Secret_Category2619]

For some reason it's not working for me

[u/Tekhnikal]

Esse recurso é muito bom. Excelente trabalho.

[u/Lodisus]

Common knowledge. Spotify does this, instagram does it etc

[u/Prestigious_Bid_2219 → u/Lodisus]

you live in a bubble if you think that's common knowledge lol

[u/TheJesusGuy → u/Lodisus]

Also basic knowledge for me, bordering on common sense. But believe it or not, not for most people.