10 ms·

Clean Links – Converts obfuscated or nested links to genuine clean links

192 points by based2 10y ago

c0nducktr 10y ago
This addon currently does not work with e10s / multi-process, just fyi for anyone trying it on a beta/alpha/nightly build of Firefox.
mungoman2 10y ago
That's awesome! This is needed for Chrome as well.
- gregsadetsky 10y ago
  I just found & installed the "Copy Real Url" [1] Chrome Extension which adds a context menu item to copy the 'clean' url on Google and other sites. It works well and the code is simple and short. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/copy-real-url/opelelcojgjgddbfhlolihhdmjodmjdf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/copy-real-url/opel...
pierrec 10y ago
This seems to work pretty well on Google search results. If you haven't noticed, Google search has this anti-feature bordering on the dark pattern where hovering a link shows the correct destination URL but right-clicking it (eg. to copy the destination URL) instantly replaces it with an nested Google redirect (I assume they're doing this for the tracking, statistics, etc.)
- greglindahl 10y ago
  The google redirect does tracking and referer hiding. You'll want to be sure that your browser does referer hiding if you go direct to the link.
  - gruez 10y ago
    Why is the referrer hiding important? The most that the destination page will get is what my search query is.
    - greglindahl 10y ago
      Many people consider that to be an important privacy leak. To put this into perspective: I used to have a webpage which ranked quite highly for searches related to chastity belts. Do you think the average visitor would appreciate me knowing the exact search terms that landed them on my page?
      - anc84 10y ago
        Doesn't Google Analytics provide you the exact search terms that Google phished out?
        greglindahl 10y ago
        Google Analytics doesn't associate search terms with IP addresses or times.
        ForHackernews 10y ago
        I'm sure Google does internally. Honestly, I trust Joe Random Webmaster a lot more than I trust Google, because some small site manager doesn't already have a vast corpus of data about me.
        kl4m 10y ago
        Well, yeah, Google has logs of what what people search on their search engine.
        meowface 10y ago
        I actually trust Joe Random Webmaster a lot less than Google. Google has a lot of power, but from past experience, I've run into many privacy issues with malicious or misguided website owners while I'm unlikely to run into a serious one with Google. At least assuming none of their employees goes very rogue and starts leaking data en masse, or has a personal vendetta against me or something. I know something like that happened once (https://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/ https://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/), but the odds are probably still pretty low.
- amluto 10y ago
  I wonder whether Google deliberately makes it hard to copy a real URL to the clipboard or whether it's a careless unintended side effect of tracking context menu open in new tab operations.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  There used to be 'Google Tracking-B-Gone' userjs, but it stopped working some time ago. I patched mine locally, also stripping tracking from Image results. Quick googling shows someone updated it recently https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1810-google-tracking-b-gone https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1810-google-tracking-b-gon... I have second version stripping tracking from Gmail links (yes, google tracks your clicks in gmail). Should probably throw them up on github.
  - verroq 10y ago
    I use this one for google search and image. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-link-fixer/pcpdkhaeeohmogfgcheopfcigcfdaioj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-link-fixer/...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
JadeNB 10y ago
How does this differ from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-link-fix https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search... ?
- gruez 10y ago
  it works on sites other than google?
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    > it works on sites other than google? Despite the name, so does the one that I linked. (I only see a mention of Yandex in the description, but I could have sworn it works on any page using the same tricks.)
jacquesm 10y ago
Very useful. Sad that this needs to be fixed using a plug-in or extension.
- skbohra123 10y ago
  Be thankful that we still have plugins legal.
Animats 10y ago
We do some of that in Ad Limiter, for some ad links. We want to know the real destination site so we can rate it for legitimacy. Ad Limiter puts the real destination URL back into the DOM, so if the user does click on the ad, ad tracking is bypassed. This is just a side effect of rating. But if users like it, we could do more of this. I'd considered making HEAD requests for all ad links to try to track through all the redirectors and ad services to the final site. That would probably result in lots of fake clicks for advertisers, though. There's also the question of what ad networks do with a HEAD request. Time to look at this again and run some tests.
unicornporn 10y ago
Why isn't this working on mobile Firefox? The install button is greyed out for me.
- Sylos 10y ago
  Replace "firefox" in the URL with "android", then it works. Alternatively, just go the usual route of Menu->Tools->Add-ons->"Browse all Firefox Add-ons"->Search for "Clean Links"...
  - monorailz 10y ago
    Thank you. Paying it forward by putting the link here. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/clean-links/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/clean-links/?...
JustinAiken 10y ago
Anything similar for Chrome?
rcarrigan87 10y ago
How would this affect affiliate tracking on a site like Kayak or priceline? Wouldn't it scrub over the affiliate id? Seems like that could be a major headache for sites that use URLs to track referrals/sales.
- TheRealPomax 10y ago
  Nature of the web, really. As a website, you control the content you send out to the user, but that's where it ends. If the client rewrites the content as per the user's needs or wants, that's out of the site owner's control (unless you want an arms race, of course, in which case it's pretty much lost by default for site owners vs all users on the planet)
  - cobbzilla 10y ago
    the only way I can see around this would be to give every affiliate a unique hostname on the target domain. then the site owner would identify the affiliate using the hostname of the incoming request. next step in the arms race would then be for an addon to understand per-domain rules for rewriting hostnames. lather, rinse, repeat.
Sylos 10y ago
> About the Developer: Name Diego Casorran Homepage http://goo.gl/eyC52 The irony is strong with this one...
Too 10y ago
There is another extension called redirector that does the same thing. Anyone knows of the differences?
- hackernews2000 10y ago
  Redirector (https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector/ https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector/) lets you create your own rules for all kinds of purposes and have complete control over them (including by testing them against different URLs). The subject of this thread seems to come preloaded with some a bunch of URLs and strings and doesn't let you create separate manipulation rules. It's literally just a "cleaner". Compare OP's link: https://i.imgur.com/CZPkRYD.png https://i.imgur.com/CZPkRYD.png To Redirector's power and reflexibility: https://i.imgur.com/lYb9DtQ.png https://i.imgur.com/lYb9DtQ.png As you can see, what Clean Links does can be done with a single Redirector rule, while having the power to create as many others as you want.
heinrich5991 10y ago
How does this work? Does this just look for things that look similar to URLs in the parameters? Especially: How does the unshortener work?
- JadeNB 10y ago
  See hackernews2000's (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12064870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12064870) very nice comment.
justinmayer 10y ago
For Safari, I use the following extensions, which provide similar (but not identical) functionality: http://canisbos.com/directlinks http://canisbos.com/directlinks https://github.com/grahams/safari-utm-stripper https://github.com/grahams/safari-utm-stripper

192 points by based2 10y ago

This addon currently does not work with e10s / multi-process, just fyi for anyone trying it on a beta/alpha/nightly build of Firefox.

mungoman2 10y ago

That's awesome! This is needed for Chrome as well.

gregsadetsky 10y ago
I just found & installed the "Copy Real Url" [1] Chrome Extension which adds a context menu item to copy the 'clean' url on Google and other sites. It works well and the code is simple and short. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/copy-real-url/opelelcojgjgddbfhlolihhdmjodmjdf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/copy-real-url/opel...

pierrec 10y ago

This seems to work pretty well on Google search results. If you haven't noticed, Google search has this anti-feature bordering on the dark pattern where hovering a link shows the correct destination URL but right-clicking it (eg. to copy the destination URL) instantly replaces it with an nested Google redirect (I assume they're doing this for the tracking, statistics, etc.)

greglindahl 10y ago
The google redirect does tracking and referer hiding. You'll want to be sure that your browser does referer hiding if you go direct to the link.
- gruez 10y ago
  Why is the referrer hiding important? The most that the destination page will get is what my search query is.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    Many people consider that to be an important privacy leak. To put this into perspective: I used to have a webpage which ranked quite highly for searches related to chastity belts. Do you think the average visitor would appreciate me knowing the exact search terms that landed them on my page?
    - anc84 10y ago
      Doesn't Google Analytics provide you the exact search terms that Google phished out?
      - greglindahl 10y ago
        Google Analytics doesn't associate search terms with IP addresses or times.
        ForHackernews 10y ago
        I'm sure Google does internally. Honestly, I trust Joe Random Webmaster a lot more than I trust Google, because some small site manager doesn't already have a vast corpus of data about me.
        kl4m 10y ago
        Well, yeah, Google has logs of what what people search on their search engine.
        meowface 10y ago
        I actually trust Joe Random Webmaster a lot less than Google. Google has a lot of power, but from past experience, I've run into many privacy issues with malicious or misguided website owners while I'm unlikely to run into a serious one with Google. At least assuming none of their employees goes very rogue and starts leaking data en masse, or has a personal vendetta against me or something. I know something like that happened once (https://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/ https://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/), but the odds are probably still pretty low.
amluto 10y ago
I wonder whether Google deliberately makes it hard to copy a real URL to the clipboard or whether it's a careless unintended side effect of tracking context menu open in new tab operations.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
rasz_pl 10y ago
There used to be 'Google Tracking-B-Gone' userjs, but it stopped working some time ago. I patched mine locally, also stripping tracking from Image results. Quick googling shows someone updated it recently https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1810-google-tracking-b-gone https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1810-google-tracking-b-gon... I have second version stripping tracking from Gmail links (yes, google tracks your clicks in gmail). Should probably throw them up on github.
- verroq 10y ago
  I use this one for google search and image. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-link-fixer/pcpdkhaeeohmogfgcheopfcigcfdaioj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-link-fixer/...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

JadeNB 10y ago

How does this differ from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-link-fix https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search... ?

gruez 10y ago
it works on sites other than google?
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > it works on sites other than google? Despite the name, so does the one that I linked. (I only see a mention of Yandex in the description, but I could have sworn it works on any page using the same tricks.)

jacquesm 10y ago

Very useful. Sad that this needs to be fixed using a plug-in or extension.

skbohra123 10y ago
Be thankful that we still have plugins legal.

Animats 10y ago

We do some of that in Ad Limiter, for some ad links. We want to know the real destination site so we can rate it for legitimacy. Ad Limiter puts the real destination URL back into the DOM, so if the user does click on the ad, ad tracking is bypassed. This is just a side effect of rating. But if users like it, we could do more of this. I'd considered making HEAD requests for all ad links to try to track through all the redirectors and ad services to the final site. That would probably result in lots of fake clicks for advertisers, though. There's also the question of what ad networks do with a HEAD request. Time to look at this again and run some tests.

unicornporn 10y ago

Why isn't this working on mobile Firefox? The install button is greyed out for me.

Sylos 10y ago
Replace "firefox" in the URL with "android", then it works. Alternatively, just go the usual route of Menu->Tools->Add-ons->"Browse all Firefox Add-ons"->Search for "Clean Links"...
- monorailz 10y ago
  Thank you. Paying it forward by putting the link here. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/clean-links/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/clean-links/?...

JustinAiken 10y ago

Anything similar for Chrome?

rcarrigan87 10y ago

How would this affect affiliate tracking on a site like Kayak or priceline? Wouldn't it scrub over the affiliate id? Seems like that could be a major headache for sites that use URLs to track referrals/sales.

TheRealPomax 10y ago
Nature of the web, really. As a website, you control the content you send out to the user, but that's where it ends. If the client rewrites the content as per the user's needs or wants, that's out of the site owner's control (unless you want an arms race, of course, in which case it's pretty much lost by default for site owners vs all users on the planet)
- cobbzilla 10y ago
  the only way I can see around this would be to give every affiliate a unique hostname on the target domain. then the site owner would identify the affiliate using the hostname of the incoming request. next step in the arms race would then be for an addon to understand per-domain rules for rewriting hostnames. lather, rinse, repeat.

Sylos 10y ago

> About the Developer: Name Diego Casorran Homepage http://goo.gl/eyC52 The irony is strong with this one...

Too 10y ago

There is another extension called redirector that does the same thing. Anyone knows of the differences?

hackernews2000 10y ago
Redirector (https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector/ https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector/) lets you create your own rules for all kinds of purposes and have complete control over them (including by testing them against different URLs). The subject of this thread seems to come preloaded with some a bunch of URLs and strings and doesn't let you create separate manipulation rules. It's literally just a "cleaner". Compare OP's link: https://i.imgur.com/CZPkRYD.png https://i.imgur.com/CZPkRYD.png To Redirector's power and reflexibility: https://i.imgur.com/lYb9DtQ.png https://i.imgur.com/lYb9DtQ.png As you can see, what Clean Links does can be done with a single Redirector rule, while having the power to create as many others as you want.

heinrich5991 10y ago

How does this work? Does this just look for things that look similar to URLs in the parameters? Especially: How does the unshortener work?

JadeNB 10y ago
See hackernews2000's (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12064870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12064870) very nice comment.

justinmayer 10y ago

For Safari, I use the following extensions, which provide similar (but not identical) functionality: http://canisbos.com/directlinks http://canisbos.com/directlinks https://github.com/grahams/safari-utm-stripper https://github.com/grahams/safari-utm-stripper