39 ms·

What does "Copy clean link" mean?

366 points by gregors 4y ago

gesman 4y ago
Does it follow redirects and removes affiliate links?
pphysch 4y ago
How does Brave determine what is a necessary query parameter and what is not?
- poisonborz 4y ago
  Speculation: they have a list of popular sites & tracking tags
  - paulsmith 4y ago
    I've always thought those ?v= after YouTube links and ?id= after HN articles looked sus ...
    - dymk 4y ago
      It's how YouTube tracks what videos I watch and how HN tracks what comments I've read! Dastardly clever of them...
  - lmkg 4y ago
    Indeed, a few clicks from the article arrives at the specific list: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/browser/net/brave_query_filter.cc#L21 https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/browser/net/...
- joe5150 4y ago
  Their filters are open source. https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/browser/net/brave_query_filter.cc#L21 https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/browser/net/...
  - pphysch 4y ago
    Thanks! Seems unlikely to hit any false positives.
    - jay_kyburz 4y ago
      Also trivial to bypass if a developer could care less.
- zamnos 4y ago
  even just manually putting fbclid on the list would go a long way to assuaging the paranoid
techwizrd 4y ago
For those looking for similar functionality in Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, I've been using ClearURLs[0] for several years in Firefox and Firefox on Android. It works well. 0: https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon
- LorenDB 4y ago
  You beat me to it :)
- atdt 4y ago
  Reviews on the Chrome Web Store mention that the extension can break Google OAuth login flow and Amazon checkout. Did you encounter that at all?
  - joe5150 4y ago
    For what it's worth I use the FF version and I've never had this problem as far as I can tell.
    - techwizrd 4y ago
      I also use the FF version and have not encountered this problem (to my knowledge).
  - BeefySwain 4y ago
    I used to use this and it did indeed break Amazon checkout. Took me forever to figure out!
  - jonas-w 4y ago
    Not OP, and YMMV, but i never had problems with google, amazon or any other website. ClearURLs is one of those extensions you install, after you open your browser for the first time and completely forget about it, because it just works (TM). As a matter of fact, I had to make sure that it was even installed, before commenting.
  - ptaken 4y ago
superkuh 4y ago
The most amazing thing about this link is that the cloudflare page it shows me before the actual page actually sends me to the real page instead of just sitting and spinning forever no matter how many captcha or whatever I do. I suppose Brave went out of there way to tweak the cloudflare options to allow cross browser compatibility. I didn't know this was possible at all. I guess all the other sites on the web just don't care.
- harry8 4y ago
  cloudflare is a real worry, huh? Not talked about much but their power is quite a bit larger than a de-centralised web should tolerate.
gnicholas 4y ago
I wish I could open a link from Messages this way. You can copy the link, but doing so triggers a "preview", which loads the link in an inset window.
filipmares 4y ago
Why not make this the default calling it "Copy Link" and offer a second option "Copy Link With Potential Tracking!!!"?
- netsharc 4y ago
  Huh, let's not do that. If I chose "Copy link", I'd expect an exact copy of the string, not a modified (cleaned) one. What next, an image editor where "Copy image" gives you an enhanced image where e.g. people in the background and imperfections on people's skin are removed?
  - codetrotter 4y ago
    > imperfections on people's skin are removed? Why stop there? Why not remove the skin altogether :>
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    >What next, an image editor where "Copy image" gives you an enhanced image where [...] imperfections on people's skin are removed Nope, not "next", TikTok did that already https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/10/1026074/tiktok-mandatory-beauty-filter-bug/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/10/1026074/tiktok-m...
- morjom 4y ago
  because "Copy Link" tells the user they are about to copy the entirety of the link.
TechBro8615 4y ago
I wish I had this for Twitter links in iOS Safari. It's so difficult to scroll to the right and delete all the query parameters. I also wish Apple would give me a way to expand the URL bar to a word-wrapped input that takes up half the screen. I can't stand highlighting text in that tiny little box.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > I wish I had this for Twitter links in iOS Safari. [self-promotion] My extension StopTheMadness does this: https://apps.apple.com/app/stopthemadness-mobile/id1583082931?mt=8 https://apps.apple.com/app/stopthemadness-mobile/id158308293...
  - drcongo 4y ago
    I can recommend this. Does lots of other useful things too.
  - TechBro8615 4y ago
    I actually have this installed! But I disabled it for some reason that I can't remember; I think the defaults were too aggressive and I meant to come back and configure it more precisely when I had the time. I still need to do that... thanks for making it! The other extension I can absolutely recommend is Vinegar, which replaces hostile video players like the one on YouTube (which injects JS to close itself if you attempt to use picture-in-picture) with a native HTML5 video element.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > replaces hostile video players like the one on YouTube (which injects JS to close itself if you attempt to use picture-in-picture) with a native HTML5 video element. StopTheMadness also does this. ;-)
      - ezfe 4y ago
        Does it include a quality picker? Vinegar does more than just put a <video> tag in
1123581321 4y ago
This is a good feature. Arc has a slightly better implementation of this. Cmd+shift+C is the copy current tab URL shortcut, and it removes trackers by default and lets you know it's "a clean URL without trackers :)" in the flash notification. I'd like to see Brave similarly make the default copy clean and add a copy with trackers second option.
- andai 4y ago
  A browser with a waiting list.. now I've seen it all!
  - ASalazarMX 4y ago
    For the lazy, clicking [Try it for yourself] asks for your email to notify you when "your spot is ready and waiting!". https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/ Must be a responsibly release, don't want too many powerusers flooding the web at once.
    - ciwolsey 4y ago
      All I learned from that mess of a site is that Arc is a browser of some kind.
    - jklinger410 4y ago
      IIRC this is Mac only. Although it is developed on top of Chromium. I guess Power Users only use Mac.
      - 1123581321 4y ago
        They’re developing a Windows version right now.
        jklinger410 4y ago
        Very cool. When they finally develop a Linux version of their Chromium based browser (already cross-platform) I will consider giving it a shot.
indymike 4y ago
I love the idea of reducing extra paramspam on urls... but this is easily defeated with a redirect. I.e. somedomain.com/<uid here>
- suddenclarity 4y ago
  Isn't this more of a convince when sharing a link than removing the tracking from your own sessions? It kinda assumes that you're already at the final destination when copying so no redirect will be of any use. Or I'm just misunderstanding the purpose.
legrande 4y ago
Been using CleanLinks[0] on Firefox for a while now. Nice to know I have the same feature in Brave now. Sometimes I manually remove query params from URLs when sharing them. I really need to automate that though! [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clean-links-webext/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clean-links-w...
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  Have you tried CleanURLs? It's a recommended extension, and has 120K users compared to the 154 of Cleanlinks. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/
rafaelturk 4y ago
This is great.. Amazing how simple, yeat I've never thought about this
racl101 4y ago
Nice! Very nice!
sphars 4y ago
For Android, I've been using URLCheck[0] for opening any link system wide, to clean the URL and check for redirects and open in specific browser. Just have to set it as your default browser [0]: https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker
codetrotter 4y ago
I use this sometimes and I love it. I just wish I could configure the browser to make this the default always when I copy a link.
haburka 4y ago
BRB going to change all my tracking query strings to get around this. don’t be mad at me my OKR is getting tracking to work 2% better.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  You should add an extra query param containing a MAC that is required to be present and correct for the URL to load. Just kill the normal idea of web URLs altogether.
  - warkdarrior 4y ago
    I believe the RFCs do not require URLs to have any editable structure to them (beyond host+port+path+query). In particular the path has no particular semantics and the path+query can hold any values that the server accepts. So the server can define a URL to be well formed in any way they want. Editing a URL on the client is a historical accident at best.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      Indeed, but my point is more about the assumption that a URL to a public web page is shareable. I don't know that this is every explicitly mentioned in any of the RFSs, but it seems like an undeniable assumption given that the point is for it to be a resource locator. Technically one of these URLs with tracking and a MAC should still be shareable, I suppose, but the tracking would be useless. Webmasters could go even further and generate one-time-use URLs for every page load in every session. They would still technically be URLs, but similarly would be pretty clearly in opposition to the point of URLs.
timvisee 4y ago
This is the same browser that did the opposite before: injecting their own referral parameter in links.
- dormento 4y ago
  To be fair, seemed to be by mistake and quickly corrected. They also issued an apoogy. (disclamer: I still use Firefox and recomend you do so as well).
  - rovr138 4y ago
    That's a really intentional mistake to make. Another Firefox user
    - colordrops 4y ago
      Firefox does all kinds of shady tracking too unfortunately. Really the best option is to use forks of chrome or Firefox if you are concerned with privacy.
      - harry8 4y ago
        [citation needed]
        colordrops 4y ago
        Uh, just go into the settings? It's right there.
        harry8 4y ago
        Uh. Just spell out your concerns and /why/ you need a fork to address them? Or provide a link that does so.
        colordrops 4y ago
throwaway81523 4y ago
I use a python script for this and I constantly have to tweak it to understand more urls. It's not just stripping out tracking parameters. There are also redirects to bypass, real urls encoded in the parameters of the tracked url, and all that. There are some formats which I haven't figured out, like many of the ones used in emailed links. I figure that once it converges I'll rewrite it in Javascript as a browser extension, but even after a year or two of usage and tweaking, it still misses a lot and doesn't seem robust.
- heyoni 4y ago
  Give us the gist!
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    Wow, I'm surprised anyone else wanted this. Ok I might post a pastebin link here sometime. There is some PII in the script that I'd have to edit out first. The script itself is also a mess. It grew without refactoring because I figured on a total rewrite eventually.
    - heyoni 4y ago
      No pressure btw, I thought you had something ready to show off!
bonestamp2 4y ago
This is nice, but I wish it would also remove the google tracking wrapper on URLs in g-suite.
m463 4y ago
Why wouldn't businesses just switch to unique links? In other words, like switching an amazon link from: https://www.amazon.com/dp/<product-id> to a shortened tracking url like: https://amzn.to/<unique-id>
- rovr138 4y ago
  I feel someone did something like this. Maybe facebook? Probably facebook... Edit It was facebook, https://tidbits.com/2022/07/19/facebook-change-ensures-tracking-by-preventing-url-stripping/ https://tidbits.com/2022/07/19/facebook-change-ensures-track... There's a discussion here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32129100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32129100
  - ehPReth 4y ago
    TikTok does this as well; every 'share' is a unique short link that links back to who generated it and is used, in some cases, to suggest people who view said TikTok to both of you as 'people you may know'
bhartzer 4y ago
When copying or sharing a link, I usually manually strip out everything after the ? in the URL. I've been doing this manually for several years now. Is it possible to create a bookmarklet that does the same thing (i.e., via JavaSript)?
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  I have an app I use to monitor my clipboard and rewrite certain URLs if sees, placing the clean version back in the clipboard (being sure not to end up in an infinite loop).
- LukeLambert 4y ago
  javascript:prompt('URL',window.location.origin+window.location.pathname) Edit: But be aware that some sites (like this one) need the parameters in the query string.
rozab 4y ago
https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  By way of idle curiosity: the Amazon example on the CleanURLs homepage and in the repo README calls __mk_de_DE=ÅMÅŽÕÑ a tracking parameter. Is it? Or is it a variation of the _utf8=[U+2603 SNOWMAN] technique to force ancient IE to use a reasonable POST encoding[1]? [1] https://stackoverflow.com/q/3222013 https://stackoverflow.com/q/3222013
enw 4y ago
Why is capitalization inconsistent? Some use sentence case, some title case.
smsm42 4y ago
Awesome, I was this close to making an extension for myself to do it, it's so tiring to cut out the refspam every time you copy a link.
kragen 4y ago
I want this feature so much, every time I try to copy a link from Fecebutt or Google and paste it elsewhere. This may be what gets me to switch to Brave.
- jug 4y ago
  If you get the ClearURLs extension for Chromium or Firefox and follow a link with junk at the end, it will strip it. But I couldn’t get it to clean what goes into the clipboard and indeed this would be the best.
  - jcul 4y ago
    And based on a comment above, it sounds like uBlock origin can also do this, which was news to me!
- rexf 4y ago
  I built a Mac menu bar app for cleaning your clipboard https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1528299767 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1528299767 It removes common tracking for the URL in the clipboard It also works on iPhone via the shared Universal Clipboard
andai 4y ago
The option "Copy clean link" appears even when both links are identical. It might be funny (perhaps even educational) to rename "Copy link" to "Copy tainted link" when filth is detected!
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  It's probably better UX to make the options consistent even when there's no difference
- wruza 4y ago
  Dynamic menus are terrible. Instead of just doing it you have to guess why the item is missing and then select another one.
abujazar 4y ago
The article doesn’t mention how the feature actually works and which parts of the URL are removed.
ElijahLynn 4y ago
We would be nice is to have this also work with a Ctrl + C from the URL bar.
dbg31415 4y ago
I really like extensions like this. * ClearURLs – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US) | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ * ClearURLs - Chrome Web Store | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearurls/lckanjgmijmafbedllaakclkaicjfmnk/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearurls/lckanjgm...
varenc 4y ago
If this becomes common, sites could make link cleaning impossible. They can do this just by commingling the actual content ID the link addresses with the tracking information. Facebook has already started doing this in some places [0]. For example, Facebook posts now have opaque IDs that are unique per-user. This makes it impossible to remove the tracking information and still keep a valid link. For a news site, where they want their content to be indexed by crawlers, it might not be possible to block all non-unique links, though they could certainly make it harder. We'll see what the future holds... [0] Example of a Facebook post with an opaque per-user unique URL: https://www.facebook.com/pfbid02xQBbtJYKpp8V5j5my5jaWUVij7XCTf5ZENJndCqkoJzg53xujnkjjFJagLhWAbNCl https://www.facebook.com/pfbid02xQBbtJYKpp8V5j5my5jaWUVij7XC... ( Facebook will know which account shared this URL and there's no way for me to stop them o_O )
- hackernewds 4y ago
  word of caution, any employee at Facebook will also be able to do this and be on hacker and get the same time
vic-traill 4y ago
Lots of mixed opinions on Brave in these comments, very interesting. I came to use Brave via https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/. Their results on my brave browser instance are very good. I'll admit I'm imbuing the EFF w/ a lot of confidence here, but a high confidence result from an EFF tool carries weight for me.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I use Brave somewhat reluctantly. In terms of privacy, I would prefer to use Firefox, but I have several issues with Firefox (mostly UI-related) that annoy me too much and that I could never figure out how to correct. Brave is my compromise browser.
  - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
    In terms of privacy, I would never use Firefox (over Brave). Brave is much better and secure: https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      You can lock Firefox down to be tighter than Brave.
      - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
        Yes you can but that would take a lot of work. Firefox by default is not very private. You can use LibreWolf instead.
neves 4y ago
This is a very nice feature and they should make it the default option. I really hate that when I copy a Google result page I get a reviews url If I could just import my Firefox logins, brave would be my default browser
ChickenNugger 4y ago
I've been doing this manually for years. It's nice to see as a feature in my daily driver browser. It's kind of tricky manually when it looks like the GUID at the end of a URL is a tracking link when it's actually the id of the article despite part of the headline being in the URL.
phendrenad2 4y ago
Hmm, I'm not sold on this. There's a very real danger of a new feature, which is hard to explain or understand, chasing away non-technical folks. I feel like this should be an official addon for people who want this kind of thing.
thealch3m1st 4y ago
It means showing the middle finger to those that track you
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
I've never tried Brave(no interest in using Chromium), but whenever I see them posted on HN like "look at this new feature in Brave", it's pretty much always something I've had in Firefox natively or through addons since long before Brave even existed. This is certainly no exception. When I go to their website, they show this asinine comparison of what different browsers support out of the box, conveniently the list only includes things that Brave supports. That strongly suggests cherrypicking to me. I also want to know what a browser doesn't do, and they're conveniently leaving that out. And ok, Firefox does all of those with just a couple extra addons anyway. Comparing to naked Firefox just isn't fair. This website makes me feel marketed to. That makes me implicitly distrust them.
PaulHoule 4y ago
Kinda funny but I just coded up a "clean link" feature in my smart RSS reader that removes all that utm_medium=evil garbage from links on ingest. On one level I wouldn't mind them knowing I find their content on their RSS feeds so they keep providing them, but I see duplicate articles because of this nonsense and also I was cutting them out manually when I posted articles to HN. Of course when I put that URL filter in, I also added ARCHIVE_TODAY = "https://archive.today/submit/?url=" return ARCHIVE_TODAY + quote_plus(url) for sites on a list of known paywalled sites so I don't have to do that one by hand.

366 points by gregors 4y ago

gesman 4y ago

Does it follow redirects and removes affiliate links?

pphysch 4y ago

How does Brave determine what is a necessary query parameter and what is not?

poisonborz 4y ago
Speculation: they have a list of popular sites & tracking tags
- paulsmith 4y ago
  I've always thought those ?v= after YouTube links and ?id= after HN articles looked sus ...
  - dymk 4y ago
    It's how YouTube tracks what videos I watch and how HN tracks what comments I've read! Dastardly clever of them...
- lmkg 4y ago
  Indeed, a few clicks from the article arrives at the specific list: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/browser/net/brave_query_filter.cc#L21 https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/browser/net/...
joe5150 4y ago
Their filters are open source. https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/browser/net/brave_query_filter.cc#L21 https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/browser/net/...
- pphysch 4y ago
  Thanks! Seems unlikely to hit any false positives.
  - jay_kyburz 4y ago
    Also trivial to bypass if a developer could care less.
zamnos 4y ago
even just manually putting fbclid on the list would go a long way to assuaging the paranoid

techwizrd 4y ago

For those looking for similar functionality in Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, I've been using ClearURLs[0] for several years in Firefox and Firefox on Android. It works well. 0: https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon

LorenDB 4y ago
You beat me to it :)
atdt 4y ago
Reviews on the Chrome Web Store mention that the extension can break Google OAuth login flow and Amazon checkout. Did you encounter that at all?
- joe5150 4y ago
  For what it's worth I use the FF version and I've never had this problem as far as I can tell.
  - techwizrd 4y ago
    I also use the FF version and have not encountered this problem (to my knowledge).
- BeefySwain 4y ago
  I used to use this and it did indeed break Amazon checkout. Took me forever to figure out!
- jonas-w 4y ago
  Not OP, and YMMV, but i never had problems with google, amazon or any other website. ClearURLs is one of those extensions you install, after you open your browser for the first time and completely forget about it, because it just works (TM). As a matter of fact, I had to make sure that it was even installed, before commenting.
- ptaken 4y ago

superkuh 4y ago

The most amazing thing about this link is that the cloudflare page it shows me before the actual page actually sends me to the real page instead of just sitting and spinning forever no matter how many captcha or whatever I do. I suppose Brave went out of there way to tweak the cloudflare options to allow cross browser compatibility. I didn't know this was possible at all. I guess all the other sites on the web just don't care.

harry8 4y ago
cloudflare is a real worry, huh? Not talked about much but their power is quite a bit larger than a de-centralised web should tolerate.

gnicholas 4y ago

I wish I could open a link from Messages this way. You can copy the link, but doing so triggers a "preview", which loads the link in an inset window.

filipmares 4y ago

Why not make this the default calling it "Copy Link" and offer a second option "Copy Link With Potential Tracking!!!"?

netsharc 4y ago
Huh, let's not do that. If I chose "Copy link", I'd expect an exact copy of the string, not a modified (cleaned) one. What next, an image editor where "Copy image" gives you an enhanced image where e.g. people in the background and imperfections on people's skin are removed?
- codetrotter 4y ago
  > imperfections on people's skin are removed? Why stop there? Why not remove the skin altogether :>
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  >What next, an image editor where "Copy image" gives you an enhanced image where [...] imperfections on people's skin are removed Nope, not "next", TikTok did that already https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/10/1026074/tiktok-mandatory-beauty-filter-bug/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/10/1026074/tiktok-m...
morjom 4y ago
because "Copy Link" tells the user they are about to copy the entirety of the link.

TechBro8615 4y ago

I wish I had this for Twitter links in iOS Safari. It's so difficult to scroll to the right and delete all the query parameters. I also wish Apple would give me a way to expand the URL bar to a word-wrapped input that takes up half the screen. I can't stand highlighting text in that tiny little box.

lapcat 4y ago
> I wish I had this for Twitter links in iOS Safari. [self-promotion] My extension StopTheMadness does this: https://apps.apple.com/app/stopthemadness-mobile/id1583082931?mt=8 https://apps.apple.com/app/stopthemadness-mobile/id158308293...
- drcongo 4y ago
  I can recommend this. Does lots of other useful things too.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  I actually have this installed! But I disabled it for some reason that I can't remember; I think the defaults were too aggressive and I meant to come back and configure it more precisely when I had the time. I still need to do that... thanks for making it! The other extension I can absolutely recommend is Vinegar, which replaces hostile video players like the one on YouTube (which injects JS to close itself if you attempt to use picture-in-picture) with a native HTML5 video element.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > replaces hostile video players like the one on YouTube (which injects JS to close itself if you attempt to use picture-in-picture) with a native HTML5 video element. StopTheMadness also does this. ;-)
    - ezfe 4y ago
      Does it include a quality picker? Vinegar does more than just put a <video> tag in

1123581321 4y ago

This is a good feature. Arc has a slightly better implementation of this. Cmd+shift+C is the copy current tab URL shortcut, and it removes trackers by default and lets you know it's "a clean URL without trackers :)" in the flash notification. I'd like to see Brave similarly make the default copy clean and add a copy with trackers second option.

andai 4y ago
A browser with a waiting list.. now I've seen it all!
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  For the lazy, clicking [Try it for yourself] asks for your email to notify you when "your spot is ready and waiting!". https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/ Must be a responsibly release, don't want too many powerusers flooding the web at once.
  - ciwolsey 4y ago
    All I learned from that mess of a site is that Arc is a browser of some kind.
  - jklinger410 4y ago
    IIRC this is Mac only. Although it is developed on top of Chromium. I guess Power Users only use Mac.
    - 1123581321 4y ago
      They’re developing a Windows version right now.
      - jklinger410 4y ago
        Very cool. When they finally develop a Linux version of their Chromium based browser (already cross-platform) I will consider giving it a shot.

indymike 4y ago

I love the idea of reducing extra paramspam on urls... but this is easily defeated with a redirect. I.e. somedomain.com/<uid here>

suddenclarity 4y ago
Isn't this more of a convince when sharing a link than removing the tracking from your own sessions? It kinda assumes that you're already at the final destination when copying so no redirect will be of any use. Or I'm just misunderstanding the purpose.

legrande 4y ago

Been using CleanLinks[0] on Firefox for a while now. Nice to know I have the same feature in Brave now. Sometimes I manually remove query params from URLs when sharing them. I really need to automate that though! [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clean-links-webext/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clean-links-w...

ASalazarMX 4y ago
Have you tried CleanURLs? It's a recommended extension, and has 120K users compared to the 154 of Cleanlinks. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/

rafaelturk 4y ago

This is great.. Amazing how simple, yeat I've never thought about this

racl101 4y ago

Nice! Very nice!

sphars 4y ago

For Android, I've been using URLCheck[0] for opening any link system wide, to clean the URL and check for redirects and open in specific browser. Just have to set it as your default browser [0]: https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker

codetrotter 4y ago

I use this sometimes and I love it. I just wish I could configure the browser to make this the default always when I copy a link.

haburka 4y ago

BRB going to change all my tracking query strings to get around this. don’t be mad at me my OKR is getting tracking to work 2% better.

tshaddox 4y ago
You should add an extra query param containing a MAC that is required to be present and correct for the URL to load. Just kill the normal idea of web URLs altogether.
- warkdarrior 4y ago
  I believe the RFCs do not require URLs to have any editable structure to them (beyond host+port+path+query). In particular the path has no particular semantics and the path+query can hold any values that the server accepts. So the server can define a URL to be well formed in any way they want. Editing a URL on the client is a historical accident at best.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    Indeed, but my point is more about the assumption that a URL to a public web page is shareable. I don't know that this is every explicitly mentioned in any of the RFSs, but it seems like an undeniable assumption given that the point is for it to be a resource locator. Technically one of these URLs with tracking and a MAC should still be shareable, I suppose, but the tracking would be useless. Webmasters could go even further and generate one-time-use URLs for every page load in every session. They would still technically be URLs, but similarly would be pretty clearly in opposition to the point of URLs.

timvisee 4y ago

This is the same browser that did the opposite before: injecting their own referral parameter in links.

dormento 4y ago
To be fair, seemed to be by mistake and quickly corrected. They also issued an apoogy. (disclamer: I still use Firefox and recomend you do so as well).
- rovr138 4y ago
  That's a really intentional mistake to make. Another Firefox user
  - colordrops 4y ago
    Firefox does all kinds of shady tracking too unfortunately. Really the best option is to use forks of chrome or Firefox if you are concerned with privacy.
    - harry8 4y ago
      [citation needed]
      - colordrops 4y ago
        Uh, just go into the settings? It's right there.
        harry8 4y ago
        Uh. Just spell out your concerns and /why/ you need a fork to address them? Or provide a link that does so.
        colordrops 4y ago

throwaway81523 4y ago

I use a python script for this and I constantly have to tweak it to understand more urls. It's not just stripping out tracking parameters. There are also redirects to bypass, real urls encoded in the parameters of the tracked url, and all that. There are some formats which I haven't figured out, like many of the ones used in emailed links. I figure that once it converges I'll rewrite it in Javascript as a browser extension, but even after a year or two of usage and tweaking, it still misses a lot and doesn't seem robust.

heyoni 4y ago
Give us the gist!
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  Wow, I'm surprised anyone else wanted this. Ok I might post a pastebin link here sometime. There is some PII in the script that I'd have to edit out first. The script itself is also a mess. It grew without refactoring because I figured on a total rewrite eventually.
  - heyoni 4y ago
    No pressure btw, I thought you had something ready to show off!

bonestamp2 4y ago

This is nice, but I wish it would also remove the google tracking wrapper on URLs in g-suite.

m463 4y ago

Why wouldn't businesses just switch to unique links? In other words, like switching an amazon link from: https://www.amazon.com/dp/<product-id> to a shortened tracking url like: https://amzn.to/<unique-id>

rovr138 4y ago
I feel someone did something like this. Maybe facebook? Probably facebook... Edit It was facebook, https://tidbits.com/2022/07/19/facebook-change-ensures-tracking-by-preventing-url-stripping/ https://tidbits.com/2022/07/19/facebook-change-ensures-track... There's a discussion here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32129100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32129100
- ehPReth 4y ago
  TikTok does this as well; every 'share' is a unique short link that links back to who generated it and is used, in some cases, to suggest people who view said TikTok to both of you as 'people you may know'

bhartzer 4y ago

When copying or sharing a link, I usually manually strip out everything after the ? in the URL. I've been doing this manually for several years now. Is it possible to create a bookmarklet that does the same thing (i.e., via JavaSript)?

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
I have an app I use to monitor my clipboard and rewrite certain URLs if sees, placing the clean version back in the clipboard (being sure not to end up in an infinite loop).
LukeLambert 4y ago
javascript:prompt('URL',window.location.origin+window.location.pathname) Edit: But be aware that some sites (like this one) need the parameters in the query string.

rozab 4y ago

https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon

mananaysiempre 4y ago
By way of idle curiosity: the Amazon example on the CleanURLs homepage and in the repo README calls __mk_de_DE=ÅMÅŽÕÑ a tracking parameter. Is it? Or is it a variation of the _utf8=[U+2603 SNOWMAN] technique to force ancient IE to use a reasonable POST encoding[1]? [1] https://stackoverflow.com/q/3222013 https://stackoverflow.com/q/3222013

enw 4y ago

Why is capitalization inconsistent? Some use sentence case, some title case.

smsm42 4y ago

Awesome, I was this close to making an extension for myself to do it, it's so tiring to cut out the refspam every time you copy a link.

kragen 4y ago

I want this feature so much, every time I try to copy a link from Fecebutt or Google and paste it elsewhere. This may be what gets me to switch to Brave.

jug 4y ago
If you get the ClearURLs extension for Chromium or Firefox and follow a link with junk at the end, it will strip it. But I couldn’t get it to clean what goes into the clipboard and indeed this would be the best.
- jcul 4y ago
  And based on a comment above, it sounds like uBlock origin can also do this, which was news to me!
rexf 4y ago
I built a Mac menu bar app for cleaning your clipboard https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1528299767 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1528299767 It removes common tracking for the URL in the clipboard It also works on iPhone via the shared Universal Clipboard

andai 4y ago

The option "Copy clean link" appears even when both links are identical. It might be funny (perhaps even educational) to rename "Copy link" to "Copy tainted link" when filth is detected!

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
It's probably better UX to make the options consistent even when there's no difference
wruza 4y ago
Dynamic menus are terrible. Instead of just doing it you have to guess why the item is missing and then select another one.

abujazar 4y ago

The article doesn’t mention how the feature actually works and which parts of the URL are removed.

ElijahLynn 4y ago

We would be nice is to have this also work with a Ctrl + C from the URL bar.

dbg31415 4y ago

I really like extensions like this. * ClearURLs – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US) | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ * ClearURLs - Chrome Web Store | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearurls/lckanjgmijmafbedllaakclkaicjfmnk/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearurls/lckanjgm...

varenc 4y ago

If this becomes common, sites could make link cleaning impossible. They can do this just by commingling the actual content ID the link addresses with the tracking information. Facebook has already started doing this in some places [0]. For example, Facebook posts now have opaque IDs that are unique per-user. This makes it impossible to remove the tracking information and still keep a valid link. For a news site, where they want their content to be indexed by crawlers, it might not be possible to block all non-unique links, though they could certainly make it harder. We'll see what the future holds... [0] Example of a Facebook post with an opaque per-user unique URL: https://www.facebook.com/pfbid02xQBbtJYKpp8V5j5my5jaWUVij7XCTf5ZENJndCqkoJzg53xujnkjjFJagLhWAbNCl https://www.facebook.com/pfbid02xQBbtJYKpp8V5j5my5jaWUVij7XC... ( Facebook will know which account shared this URL and there's no way for me to stop them o_O )

hackernewds 4y ago
word of caution, any employee at Facebook will also be able to do this and be on hacker and get the same time

vic-traill 4y ago

Lots of mixed opinions on Brave in these comments, very interesting. I came to use Brave via https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/. Their results on my brave browser instance are very good. I'll admit I'm imbuing the EFF w/ a lot of confidence here, but a high confidence result from an EFF tool carries weight for me.

JohnFen 4y ago
I use Brave somewhat reluctantly. In terms of privacy, I would prefer to use Firefox, but I have several issues with Firefox (mostly UI-related) that annoy me too much and that I could never figure out how to correct. Brave is my compromise browser.
- NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  In terms of privacy, I would never use Firefox (over Brave). Brave is much better and secure: https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    You can lock Firefox down to be tighter than Brave.
    - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
      Yes you can but that would take a lot of work. Firefox by default is not very private. You can use LibreWolf instead.

neves 4y ago

This is a very nice feature and they should make it the default option. I really hate that when I copy a Google result page I get a reviews url If I could just import my Firefox logins, brave would be my default browser

ChickenNugger 4y ago

I've been doing this manually for years. It's nice to see as a feature in my daily driver browser. It's kind of tricky manually when it looks like the GUID at the end of a URL is a tracking link when it's actually the id of the article despite part of the headline being in the URL.

phendrenad2 4y ago

Hmm, I'm not sold on this. There's a very real danger of a new feature, which is hard to explain or understand, chasing away non-technical folks. I feel like this should be an official addon for people who want this kind of thing.

thealch3m1st 4y ago

It means showing the middle finger to those that track you

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

I've never tried Brave(no interest in using Chromium), but whenever I see them posted on HN like "look at this new feature in Brave", it's pretty much always something I've had in Firefox natively or through addons since long before Brave even existed. This is certainly no exception. When I go to their website, they show this asinine comparison of what different browsers support out of the box, conveniently the list only includes things that Brave supports. That strongly suggests cherrypicking to me. I also want to know what a browser doesn't do, and they're conveniently leaving that out. And ok, Firefox does all of those with just a couple extra addons anyway. Comparing to naked Firefox just isn't fair. This website makes me feel marketed to. That makes me implicitly distrust them.

PaulHoule 4y ago

Kinda funny but I just coded up a "clean link" feature in my smart RSS reader that removes all that utm_medium=evil garbage from links on ingest. On one level I wouldn't mind them knowing I find their content on their RSS feeds so they keep providing them, but I see duplicate articles because of this nonsense and also I was cutting them out manually when I posted articles to HN. Of course when I put that URL filter in, I also added ARCHIVE_TODAY = "https://archive.today/submit/?url=" return ARCHIVE_TODAY + quote_plus(url) for sites on a list of known paywalled sites so I don't have to do that one by hand.