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Firefox starting to remove tracking parameters from shared URLs
(blog.nightly.mozilla.org)
A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox
I think I’m against this. Not because it’s the wrong thing to do, but it’s just going to swing marketers & such to obscure their tracking URLs to something like
/my-slug/hashed-uid-for-tracking-without-query-param/post
& it maybe unsafe or impossible to replace that part of the URL is some cases (think how not all credit cards numbers work, it has a built-in algorithm). The corpos can do this already now but query params are easier & less fiddly. Despite the large number of add-ons that could combat this already (including a uBlock Origin filter list), there wasn’t enough incentive to start another ad/tracking arms race… but you introduce it as a default feature in a major (🤞) browser, & now the corpos take notice instead of being able to wave it off as something a minority of users are doing.…And I say this as the guy that reminds
$WORK
chat poster to remove their tracking URLs for the privacy of the group