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newhouse / url-tracking-stripper

An open-source Chrome Extension that will remove the tracking parameters from URLs to keep them short and cleaner for sharing, bookmarking, etc. It will also skip any known redirects and take you straight to the target URL instead of passing you through an intermediate URL.
MIT License
192 stars 26 forks source link

Strip tracking tags in fragment identifiers #37

Open ashtw opened 6 years ago

ashtw commented 6 years ago

Some sites place tracking information in the fragment identifier portion of the URL, for example:

https://www.example.com/russia-sought-to-emulate-us-exceptionalism#.aBcDeFg123

The only thing these fragment identifiers tend to have in common is that they begin with a dot, and (weakly) have non-wordlike qualities.

I think it would be interesting to look into blocking these. Thanks!

newhouse commented 6 years ago

@ashtw Can you provide some real-world examples where I can encounter these so that I can investigate?

rexsorgatz commented 6 years ago

@newhouse The place one often sees the hashtag configuration is Buzzfeed. Here's an example:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/hazelshearing/russia-claims-syria-shot-down-cruise-missiles-targeting-a?bfsplash&utm_term=.cqZx5P1jZ#.wq1N9qwG7

Also, I don't think it's working on WaPo stories? Here's one:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/real-or-fake-news-either-way-lewd-tape-allegations-pose-a-challenge-for-trump/2018/04/13/098cdedc-3f2b-11e8-8d53-eba0ed2371cc_story.html?utm_term=.4c795e7d2db9

It should be stripping the utm_term, yes? Maybe the dot is screwing it up?

I love this thing, btw. Great job.

rexsorgatz commented 6 years ago

I found another. From a NYT breaking news alert, I got this URL:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/us/politics/tillerson-truth-lies-american-democracy-trump.html?emc=edit_na_20180516&nl=breaking-news&nlid=538776ing-news

(Have I mentioned I love this extension? I do.)

newhouse commented 6 years ago

@rexsorgatz where's the fragment in this last example? I'm not sure if I'm following anymore 🤓

rexsorgatz commented 6 years ago

My bad, in this case, not a fragment identifier, per se. It's just a query string.

?emc=edit_na_20180516&nl=breaking-news&nlid=538776ing-news