9 ms·

Neat URL cleans URLs, removing parameters such as 'fbclid' and 'utm'

213 points by mot2ba 7y ago

prophesi 7y ago
It'd be cool to implement this as a browser extension, that either silently strips the parameters, or opens a dialogue upon a link click telling you what the extension is allowed to strip out before proceeding.
- ctcherry 7y ago
  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/neat-url/jchobbjgibcahbheicfocecmhocglkco?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/neat-url/jchobbjgi...
- mcpeepants 7y ago
  That's what it is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/
  - prophesi 7y ago
    Ah, thanks! I couldn't tell that was a case from the readme.
    - symfoniq 7y ago
      In your defense, I don't see a link to the extension anywhere on the GitHub page.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
BerislavLopac 7y ago
I've written a simple bookmarklet I call UrchinKiller that does the job: javascript:window.location=window.location.href.replace(/\?([^#]*)/,function(_,s){s=s.split('&').filter(function(v){return(!/^utm_/.test(v))}).join('&');return(s?'?'+s:'')});
- admax88q 7y ago
  Won't this only apply _after_ you've loaded the page? Doesn't really help prevent the tracking that most of those parameters are used for.
  - devindotcom 7y ago
    Could still be handy for people who don't mind the URL loading big but might later want to copy-paste it somewhere in cleaner format.
    - BerislavLopac 7y ago
      I generally use it just before I trigger the "post to News.YC" bookmarklet. ;-) javascript:window.location=%22http://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=%22+encodeURIComponent(document.location)+%22&t=%22+encodeURIComponent(document.title)
lightswitch05 7y ago
I've been using this extension for a couple years now. In fact, I submitted the pull request for the fbclid feature [1]. @Smile4ever merged and released the change the next day. It is a really great extension with a responsive and helpful maintainer. I'm glad its getting some more visibility. Extension Links: Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/ Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/neat-url/jchobbjgibcahbheicfocecmhocglkco?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/neat-url/jchobbjgi... --- [1] https://github.com/Smile4ever/Neat-URL/pull/163 https://github.com/Smile4ever/Neat-URL/pull/163
- Jeremy0 7y ago
  Sounds good, I didn't know about Neat URL until now as Canonical Url Detector is what I've been using for a long time. It is slightly smaller in size, but maybe not as effective: https://github.com/irok/CanonicalUrlDetector https://github.com/irok/CanonicalUrlDetector
- Avamander 7y ago
  Unfortunately it doesn't clean up things like AliExpress URLs fully, and PRs aren't moving.
nyc_pizzadev 7y ago
This is a browser extension, I think. No where does it actually say that.
- ObsoleteNerd 7y ago
  Yeah that could definitely be made clearer. I bounced when I couldn’t quickly see if this was a browser extension or a library or something else.
  - spurgu 7y ago
    Yeah I was scrolling back and forth as well asking myself the question for what? all the time until I looked at the files and saw background.js and manifest.json, then it clicked.
- gurjeet 7y ago
  Created a pull request that fixes this confusion. https://github.com/Smile4ever/Neat-URL/pull/211 https://github.com/Smile4ever/Neat-URL/pull/211
  - oehtXRwMkIs 7y ago
    Very minor nitpick, could you change the commit message to be in imperative mood? Thanks for contributing.
ronalbarbaren 7y ago
Cool. Work well on Firefox Mobile. I installed successfully on Kiwi Browser (Chromium Mobile based) but couldn't edit extension option, glitch somehow. Hope author add a feature like importing config file.
devindotcom 7y ago
Love this kind of decluttering. I hate gigantic URLs! I've been using ClearURLs for Firefox, seems to work well. Anyone know of any major differences? https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls
- ytch 7y ago
  I tried both for about 10 minutes, it seems ClearUrl has rules per domain[1], therefore it can do more than tracking-prevention by remove some common but useless query strings in URL (like 'keyword' in amazon.com), but there is no places for custom rules. On the other hand, Neat URL's rules apply to all domain, so it won't make short Amazon links, but you can add your own rules. [1] https://kevinroebert.gitlab.io/ClearUrls/data/data.minify.json https://kevinroebert.gitlab.io/ClearUrls/data/data.minify.js...
de-amped 7y ago
It doesn't clean AMP URLs?
daef 7y ago
I like to squeeze amazon links to https://amazon.com/dp/B0085NTQJK https://amazon.com/dp/B0085NTQJK - removing the SEO inlining of the article name Removing those pesky get-parameters aint enough to keep a BOM link list in line
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  See, I actually like it when URLs contain human-readable text. Cryptic URLs like YouTube has are meaningless to me, requiring me to actually visit the page to see what it is. That's also why I dis-like link shorteners. I really like Stack Overflow's URLs because of how flexible they are. You can put anything in the title slug, since only the ID is used. When self-documenting links aren't useful, then you can omit the title slug completely. For example, these four links all point to the same page (in a code block so they don't get truncated): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37358364/rules-for-the-use-of-angle-brackets-in-typescript https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37358364/typescript-angle-brackets https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37358364 https://stackoverflow.com/q/37358364
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    You can put anything you want, but if it's not what the page expects, it will cause a redirect, which will slow down navigation just a bit.
- samatman 7y ago
  What I enjoy about Amazon links is that what comes after the product slug doesn't matter at all: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085NTQJK/Definitely-Not-Underpants/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085NTQJK/Definitely-Not-Underpan... I've had a few occasions to use this to good effect
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
runxel 7y ago
This is one of the worst GitHub readmes I've ever encountered! What is this? A CLI tool? A website? A browser extension? Had to look in the comments to tell – what a desaster.
- Lammy 7y ago
  They probably expect the Mozilla/Chrome extension sites to be the discovery point for people.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nikanj 7y ago
  Submit a pull request for a better one. Be a force of good in this world. Now you’re just dumping on work some volunteer does for free
  - pferde 7y ago
    The mere fact that something is done for voluntarily and for free does not mean it cannot be criticized if it is bad. Note that GP did not criticize the person that made the README, but the README itself. That is how it should be.
vernie 7y ago
Won't somebody please think of the advertisers?!
- ytch 7y ago
  complaining from advertisement industry in 3...2...1...
jvehent 7y ago
I hate gigantic URLs, but not as much as I hate extensions that want to access my data for all websites.
- lstamour 7y ago
  Grab the source code, review it for AJAX or DOM manipulations and install it via Developer mode? Also, set reminders to review diffs and update it as new releases occur...
  - drusepth 7y ago
    That seems like a lot of work for an extension that just makes URLs prettier.
    - commoner 7y ago
      Most users of this extension install it because it nullifies some forms of browser tracking, not because it makes URLs prettier. I've shared instructions for inspecting the source code of a Firefox add-on elsewhere in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22388603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22388603 WebExtensions like Neat URL continue to work even if you don't update it. You only have to inspect the extension code once (no developer mode needed) if you are skeptical, and you don't have to update it if you don't want to.
      - lstamour 7y ago
        The paranoid in me says there’s no point in installing the web store version unless you download and inspect /it/. The source code published isn’t necessarily the version distributed, though obviously injecting code in the CI pipeline would be... excessive. This goes back to the trusting trust problem. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_trus.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_tr... If someone managed to skip an exploit into a release of webpack, well, there goes the Internet ;-)
lmkg 7y ago
Google Analytics expert here. This is missing some fundamental ones: gclid and dclid. Those are the parameters that identify a specific click from a specific user on a specific ad placement. They are the keys that Google uses on the back-end to join Google Analytics data with Google Ads (formerly AdWords) and DV360 (formerly DoubleClick) data. The utm_ parameters are tame. They are very coarse-grained, usually representing "which budget did this ad come from" rather than anything about a user. They're ugly, which is enough reason to strip them, but gclid is also ugly, and much more identifying. This is a bit of a fringe opinion, but I actually consider tools that block utm_ but leave gclid to actually be a decrease in privacy. A lot of people misconfigure their Google Analytics so that _utm params break the gclid. Stripping utms allows that join to happen.
- derefr 7y ago
  I mean, maybe you're in it for the privacy benefits, but I just want to auto-normalize URLs (i.e. to throw away anything that isn't necessary to get you to the page) for rendering permalinks in journal citations, in printed ad-copy, etc. I'd guess a lot of these libraries have the same goal. And in that context, they probably mostly seek to automate the stripping of the particular parameters that the author themselves has encountered, been annoyed by, and manually stripped before; rather than seeking to strip parameters based on the particular meaning or information they encode.
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    From a privacy perspective, that's even more horrifying. You leave in the unique identifier, and then publish it under your real name, allowing all of those clicks to be attributed to your actual identity.
    - quicklime 7y ago
      From a privacy perspective, is that really that bad? You've got a bunch of other people's clicks messing up your marketing profile. This might even be a good thing, because it pollutes the dataset that the adtech people are using, which makes the trackers less useful. So here's a feature suggestion: instead of removing URL parameters, replace them with a randomly-generated value. Be careful to use the same length and character set (e.g. replace a hex id with only hex digits). And also, set DNT=1. That gives the digital marketing people an incentive to respect the DNT header, and an easy way to maintain data quality. I think that this is a better strategy than blocking trackers and "cleaning" URLs. It shifts the economics of web tracking, which short of legislation, is the only way things are going to change.
nickjj 7y ago
In order to install this browser extension it requires permissions of "can read and change all your data on the websites you visit". So basically a man in the middle attack that tracks every site you visit and could potentially modify the content on pages you visit without you knowing. As much as I enjoy privacy, IMO it's a much bigger violation / risk to give my complete browsing history to some extension, especially since it can "read all your data". That means it can look at the HTML response of any page you visit which means access to your banking details, email account and everything you ever browse. That's all personally identifiable data. I wouldn't even consider utm tags a privacy violation since it's really nothing more than a slightly more useful referrer header that's completely anonymous.
- lightswitch05 7y ago
  What are your thoughts about it being an open source extension?
  - nickjj 7y ago
    > What are your thoughts about the being an open source extension? It being open source doesn't guarantee what you see on GitHub is the code that the extension uses. I'm not saying this author is acting maliciously but a very common attack is to say something is open source, point to the repo but in reality the code running in the extension is unrelated to that repo. This often happens with packages installed by popular package managers. The home page of the package will be linked to GitHub so it appears to be open source but the package itself has different code because most of these package hosting sites don't pull in code directly from GitHub. The package author can publish code from a private closed source copy of the code sitting on their dev box and no one would ever know unless they looked at the source code after installing the package. Now, when it comes to Chrome extensions I do believe there's ways to check out the source code of any extension you use, so you could double check it there but then you have to worry about the extension getting updated too.
    - gruez 7y ago
      >I'm not saying this author is acting maliciously but a very common attack is to say something is open source, point to the repo but in reality the code running in the extension is unrelated to that repo. The extension is small enough that you can inspect it yourself. Also, AMO addons are code-inspected by reviewers, unlike the chrome store. >Now, when it comes to Chrome extensions I do believe there's ways to check out the source code of any extension you use, so you could double check it there but then you have to worry about the extension getting updated too. That's why I disable addon updates for "uncommon" addons.
winrid 7y ago
Anyone know if there's an NPM library that does this? If not I may have to abstract this out into one for a project (thanks for making it!!).
Satwell 7y ago
I've been using Request Control (https://github.com/tumpio/requestcontrol https://github.com/tumpio/requestcontrol) which does some of the same stuff, though it looks like Neat URL and Clean URL do more.
class4behavior 7y ago
On Firefox, I dropped this extension for the more versatile Request Control[1] as Neat URL failed to work for a long time; not sure about now. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestcontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestcontro...
gcmrtc 7y ago
I don't get this. My solution is to use uBlock Origin and block tracking altogether. This still allows GA to track you, it just removes some information from the tracking beacon.
- t0astbread 7y ago
  Couldn't website owners still analyze their server logs to track users via tracking parameters?
hieudang9 7y ago
In another approach, we could use userscript for Violentmonkey/Greasemonkey browser addons. This way remind me the era of UserScript with Firefox version below 57, I almost can do anything with UserScript. Nowaday, it has some changes and limitations. https://github.com/cloux/LinkSanitizer https://github.com/cloux/LinkSanitizer

213 points by mot2ba 7y ago

It'd be cool to implement this as a browser extension, that either silently strips the parameters, or opens a dialogue upon a link click telling you what the extension is allowed to strip out before proceeding.

ctcherry 7y ago
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/neat-url/jchobbjgibcahbheicfocecmhocglkco?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/neat-url/jchobbjgi...
mcpeepants 7y ago
That's what it is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/
- prophesi 7y ago
  Ah, thanks! I couldn't tell that was a case from the readme.
  - symfoniq 7y ago
    In your defense, I don't see a link to the extension anywhere on the GitHub page.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

BerislavLopac 7y ago

I've written a simple bookmarklet I call UrchinKiller that does the job: javascript:window.location=window.location.href.replace(/\?([^#]*)/,function(_,s){s=s.split('&').filter(function(v){return(!/^utm_/.test(v))}).join('&');return(s?'?'+s:'')});

admax88q 7y ago
Won't this only apply _after_ you've loaded the page? Doesn't really help prevent the tracking that most of those parameters are used for.
- devindotcom 7y ago
  Could still be handy for people who don't mind the URL loading big but might later want to copy-paste it somewhere in cleaner format.
  - BerislavLopac 7y ago
    I generally use it just before I trigger the "post to News.YC" bookmarklet. ;-) javascript:window.location=%22http://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=%22+encodeURIComponent(document.location)+%22&t=%22+encodeURIComponent(document.title)

lightswitch05 7y ago

I've been using this extension for a couple years now. In fact, I submitted the pull request for the fbclid feature [1]. @Smile4ever merged and released the change the next day. It is a really great extension with a responsive and helpful maintainer. I'm glad its getting some more visibility. Extension Links: Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/ Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/neat-url/jchobbjgibcahbheicfocecmhocglkco?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/neat-url/jchobbjgi... --- [1] https://github.com/Smile4ever/Neat-URL/pull/163 https://github.com/Smile4ever/Neat-URL/pull/163

Jeremy0 7y ago
Sounds good, I didn't know about Neat URL until now as Canonical Url Detector is what I've been using for a long time. It is slightly smaller in size, but maybe not as effective: https://github.com/irok/CanonicalUrlDetector https://github.com/irok/CanonicalUrlDetector
Avamander 7y ago
Unfortunately it doesn't clean up things like AliExpress URLs fully, and PRs aren't moving.

nyc_pizzadev 7y ago

This is a browser extension, I think. No where does it actually say that.

ObsoleteNerd 7y ago
Yeah that could definitely be made clearer. I bounced when I couldn’t quickly see if this was a browser extension or a library or something else.
- spurgu 7y ago
  Yeah I was scrolling back and forth as well asking myself the question for what? all the time until I looked at the files and saw background.js and manifest.json, then it clicked.
gurjeet 7y ago
Created a pull request that fixes this confusion. https://github.com/Smile4ever/Neat-URL/pull/211 https://github.com/Smile4ever/Neat-URL/pull/211
- oehtXRwMkIs 7y ago
  Very minor nitpick, could you change the commit message to be in imperative mood? Thanks for contributing.

ronalbarbaren 7y ago

Cool. Work well on Firefox Mobile. I installed successfully on Kiwi Browser (Chromium Mobile based) but couldn't edit extension option, glitch somehow. Hope author add a feature like importing config file.

devindotcom 7y ago

Love this kind of decluttering. I hate gigantic URLs! I've been using ClearURLs for Firefox, seems to work well. Anyone know of any major differences? https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls

ytch 7y ago
I tried both for about 10 minutes, it seems ClearUrl has rules per domain[1], therefore it can do more than tracking-prevention by remove some common but useless query strings in URL (like 'keyword' in amazon.com), but there is no places for custom rules. On the other hand, Neat URL's rules apply to all domain, so it won't make short Amazon links, but you can add your own rules. [1] https://kevinroebert.gitlab.io/ClearUrls/data/data.minify.json https://kevinroebert.gitlab.io/ClearUrls/data/data.minify.js...

de-amped 7y ago

It doesn't clean AMP URLs?

daef 7y ago

I like to squeeze amazon links to https://amazon.com/dp/B0085NTQJK https://amazon.com/dp/B0085NTQJK - removing the SEO inlining of the article name Removing those pesky get-parameters aint enough to keep a BOM link list in line

frosted-flakes 7y ago
See, I actually like it when URLs contain human-readable text. Cryptic URLs like YouTube has are meaningless to me, requiring me to actually visit the page to see what it is. That's also why I dis-like link shorteners. I really like Stack Overflow's URLs because of how flexible they are. You can put anything in the title slug, since only the ID is used. When self-documenting links aren't useful, then you can omit the title slug completely. For example, these four links all point to the same page (in a code block so they don't get truncated): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37358364/rules-for-the-use-of-angle-brackets-in-typescript https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37358364/typescript-angle-brackets https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37358364 https://stackoverflow.com/q/37358364
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  You can put anything you want, but if it's not what the page expects, it will cause a redirect, which will slow down navigation just a bit.
samatman 7y ago
What I enjoy about Amazon links is that what comes after the product slug doesn't matter at all: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085NTQJK/Definitely-Not-Underpants/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085NTQJK/Definitely-Not-Underpan... I've had a few occasions to use this to good effect

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

runxel 7y ago

This is one of the worst GitHub readmes I've ever encountered! What is this? A CLI tool? A website? A browser extension? Had to look in the comments to tell – what a desaster.

Lammy 7y ago
They probably expect the Mozilla/Chrome extension sites to be the discovery point for people.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nikanj 7y ago
Submit a pull request for a better one. Be a force of good in this world. Now you’re just dumping on work some volunteer does for free
- pferde 7y ago
  The mere fact that something is done for voluntarily and for free does not mean it cannot be criticized if it is bad. Note that GP did not criticize the person that made the README, but the README itself. That is how it should be.

vernie 7y ago

Won't somebody please think of the advertisers?!

ytch 7y ago
complaining from advertisement industry in 3...2...1...

jvehent 7y ago

I hate gigantic URLs, but not as much as I hate extensions that want to access my data for all websites.

lstamour 7y ago
Grab the source code, review it for AJAX or DOM manipulations and install it via Developer mode? Also, set reminders to review diffs and update it as new releases occur...
- drusepth 7y ago
  That seems like a lot of work for an extension that just makes URLs prettier.
  - commoner 7y ago
    Most users of this extension install it because it nullifies some forms of browser tracking, not because it makes URLs prettier. I've shared instructions for inspecting the source code of a Firefox add-on elsewhere in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22388603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22388603 WebExtensions like Neat URL continue to work even if you don't update it. You only have to inspect the extension code once (no developer mode needed) if you are skeptical, and you don't have to update it if you don't want to.
    - lstamour 7y ago
      The paranoid in me says there’s no point in installing the web store version unless you download and inspect /it/. The source code published isn’t necessarily the version distributed, though obviously injecting code in the CI pipeline would be... excessive. This goes back to the trusting trust problem. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_trus.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_tr... If someone managed to skip an exploit into a release of webpack, well, there goes the Internet ;-)

lmkg 7y ago

Google Analytics expert here. This is missing some fundamental ones: gclid and dclid. Those are the parameters that identify a specific click from a specific user on a specific ad placement. They are the keys that Google uses on the back-end to join Google Analytics data with Google Ads (formerly AdWords) and DV360 (formerly DoubleClick) data. The utm_ parameters are tame. They are very coarse-grained, usually representing "which budget did this ad come from" rather than anything about a user. They're ugly, which is enough reason to strip them, but gclid is also ugly, and much more identifying. This is a bit of a fringe opinion, but I actually consider tools that block utm_ but leave gclid to actually be a decrease in privacy. A lot of people misconfigure their Google Analytics so that _utm params break the gclid. Stripping utms allows that join to happen.

derefr 7y ago
I mean, maybe you're in it for the privacy benefits, but I just want to auto-normalize URLs (i.e. to throw away anything that isn't necessary to get you to the page) for rendering permalinks in journal citations, in printed ad-copy, etc. I'd guess a lot of these libraries have the same goal. And in that context, they probably mostly seek to automate the stripping of the particular parameters that the author themselves has encountered, been annoyed by, and manually stripped before; rather than seeking to strip parameters based on the particular meaning or information they encode.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  From a privacy perspective, that's even more horrifying. You leave in the unique identifier, and then publish it under your real name, allowing all of those clicks to be attributed to your actual identity.
  - quicklime 7y ago
    From a privacy perspective, is that really that bad? You've got a bunch of other people's clicks messing up your marketing profile. This might even be a good thing, because it pollutes the dataset that the adtech people are using, which makes the trackers less useful. So here's a feature suggestion: instead of removing URL parameters, replace them with a randomly-generated value. Be careful to use the same length and character set (e.g. replace a hex id with only hex digits). And also, set DNT=1. That gives the digital marketing people an incentive to respect the DNT header, and an easy way to maintain data quality. I think that this is a better strategy than blocking trackers and "cleaning" URLs. It shifts the economics of web tracking, which short of legislation, is the only way things are going to change.

nickjj 7y ago

In order to install this browser extension it requires permissions of "can read and change all your data on the websites you visit". So basically a man in the middle attack that tracks every site you visit and could potentially modify the content on pages you visit without you knowing. As much as I enjoy privacy, IMO it's a much bigger violation / risk to give my complete browsing history to some extension, especially since it can "read all your data". That means it can look at the HTML response of any page you visit which means access to your banking details, email account and everything you ever browse. That's all personally identifiable data. I wouldn't even consider utm tags a privacy violation since it's really nothing more than a slightly more useful referrer header that's completely anonymous.

lightswitch05 7y ago
What are your thoughts about it being an open source extension?
- nickjj 7y ago
  > What are your thoughts about the being an open source extension? It being open source doesn't guarantee what you see on GitHub is the code that the extension uses. I'm not saying this author is acting maliciously but a very common attack is to say something is open source, point to the repo but in reality the code running in the extension is unrelated to that repo. This often happens with packages installed by popular package managers. The home page of the package will be linked to GitHub so it appears to be open source but the package itself has different code because most of these package hosting sites don't pull in code directly from GitHub. The package author can publish code from a private closed source copy of the code sitting on their dev box and no one would ever know unless they looked at the source code after installing the package. Now, when it comes to Chrome extensions I do believe there's ways to check out the source code of any extension you use, so you could double check it there but then you have to worry about the extension getting updated too.
  - gruez 7y ago
    >I'm not saying this author is acting maliciously but a very common attack is to say something is open source, point to the repo but in reality the code running in the extension is unrelated to that repo. The extension is small enough that you can inspect it yourself. Also, AMO addons are code-inspected by reviewers, unlike the chrome store. >Now, when it comes to Chrome extensions I do believe there's ways to check out the source code of any extension you use, so you could double check it there but then you have to worry about the extension getting updated too. That's why I disable addon updates for "uncommon" addons.

winrid 7y ago

Anyone know if there's an NPM library that does this? If not I may have to abstract this out into one for a project (thanks for making it!!).

Satwell 7y ago

I've been using Request Control (https://github.com/tumpio/requestcontrol https://github.com/tumpio/requestcontrol) which does some of the same stuff, though it looks like Neat URL and Clean URL do more.

class4behavior 7y ago

On Firefox, I dropped this extension for the more versatile Request Control[1] as Neat URL failed to work for a long time; not sure about now. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestcontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestcontro...

gcmrtc 7y ago

I don't get this. My solution is to use uBlock Origin and block tracking altogether. This still allows GA to track you, it just removes some information from the tracking beacon.

t0astbread 7y ago
Couldn't website owners still analyze their server logs to track users via tracking parameters?

hieudang9 7y ago

In another approach, we could use userscript for Violentmonkey/Greasemonkey browser addons. This way remind me the era of UserScript with Firefox version below 57, I almost can do anything with UserScript. Nowaday, it has some changes and limitations. https://github.com/cloux/LinkSanitizer https://github.com/cloux/LinkSanitizer