Why YSK: Trackers don’t do good for anyone except the platform, and they’re not necessary to view the content in the URL.
It’s courteous to not subject the recipient (most likely your friends and family) to this tracking. You’re already sending them to the platform, which is tracking them in other ways. But you can help reduce that tracking by removing everything after the ampersand in the URL. Here are some examples.
Twitter example
URL: https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937?s=20
The s=20 is a Twitter-specific parameter to show that the tweet was copied from the web app. s=46 is iOS, and I can’t remember what Android’s code is. This is a relatively clean link, but there are some links that’ll concatenate unique identifiers, like: https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937?s=20&t=Fn47fnSDJUD74bd9.
In this case, you’ll notice there’s also a &t= parameter, which is a unique identifier to the person who shared it.
The only part of the URL you need is https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937.
Instagram example:
URL: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzP877du2EB/?igshid=MzRlODCFWFlZA==
The only part of the URL you need is https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzP877du2EB.
TikTok example
You’ll notice TikTok’s is a lot more readable in terms of what the URL contains.
The is_from_webapp parameter is self-explanatory, as is the sender_device, and then there’s the identifier that’s unique to you. In this case, 7302915057791436331.
The only part of the URL you need is https://www.tiktok.com/@inthepaintcrew/video/7301348328602717482.
The best route1 would be to use privacy-respecting frontends, but if you don’t, simply deleting everything after the ampersand goes a long way.
1The best route would actually be to not use/reward platforms that are literally destroying humanity, but we’re not there yet, so… in the meantime, let’s just try to decrease the tracking and stop subjecting our friends and family to it as much as possible.
I will add to this that UTM tracking is a little less invasive. I have gotten my boss to use UTM codes instead of full-blown tracking so we can at least capture which ads people clicked on and on which platform without capturing any personal data. As long as you pay attention to the other tags, UTM are reasonable from what I have seen in my research. Gives enough info to let the business know what is going on without letting them know who is doing it.
That said, I use ScriptSafe on Chrome and a similar one on Firefox to ban the tracking code on websites entirely (along with anything that is not 100% necessary to view the page), so even if there are codes in the URLs I open, they are never logged by the analytics services that capture it.
I suggest it to everyone. Block the scripts. It is a pain in the ass whenever you go to a new page, but you have the opportunity to see what off-domain script sources are attempting to execute and you can research the sources, then decide if you want to allow them to execute or not, and decide if you want to associate with a page before you give them much of anything. Overall, distrust google tag manager, Google Analytics, and literally anything that has “ad” in it and you get about 60% of the nasty out of the way.
Fuck cutting the snake off at the head, I for his damn balls. Seems to work too as what advertising I do see, usually while casting streams, is all over the map. I get ads for video games next to ads for hip replacements, and I smile knowing that I have ghosted them as effectively as I can without going off grid.
Not familiar with ScriptSafe—wonder if anyone here can confirm it’s necessary if you’re already using uBlock Origin. I would err on the side of “no,” but you never know.
They do different things. Ad blockers help to manage things that are being displayed, but there are still off-domain scripts that are run that you don’t know what is buried in them. Plugins on website builder services, 3rd party data harvesters, god only knows what else. I use uBlock Origin in conjunction. Google Tag Manager is not blocked by uBlock. There are sites I’ve been to that had like 30 off-domain scripts trying to load shit even with uBlock active.
Indeed, not all UTM tracking parameters are harmful. For example, you could have parameters like
?src=email&campaign=summer2023that would denote how users engaged with the URL, without necessarily identifying them.Many platforms, however, will try to identify you and collect as much as possible.
That is how we use them.