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I used to get emails from a particular recruiter which would include a link to a job listing on their employer's website. I'd always remove some extraneous trac
by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
I used to get emails from a particular recruiter which would include a link to a job listing on their employer's website. I'd always remove some extraneous tracking information from it, landing on a single identifier which I believe was unique to me but still showed the job listing.
I believe the job-listing identifier was always unique because I eventually got an email from this recruiter which instead contained a bit.ly link, presumably because it rendered me unable to remove the tracking information. I did not click on that link. That was also the last email I received from that person, cementing the idea in my mind that he was "on to me" affecting their recruitment analytics.
Sometimes I think back on that time and smile, knowing that I caused some difficulty -- however small -- for someone working in business intelligence with my dumb anti-tracking antics. Admittedly, they did successfully track some of my behavior but they had to do it manually with a human thinking critically so I'll call it a win.
Anyway, the point of the story is that I didn't click the URL-shortened link because they're shady AF and often used for the specific purpose of hiding details about the URL. Tracking is a rather benign "abuse" of this but there are other practical concerns with malicious domains.
- dylan604 3y agoIt's funny to me that a 140 char limit to a post drove the wide use of URL shortening services to the point people just accept them as normal.
- nocoiner 3y agoI think this was mostly just my personal slightly-paranoid aversion to political risk, but it always astounded me that someone was willing to use the Libyan TLD during the days of Gaddafi to build a link-shortening business.
- seszett 3y ago> during the days of Gaddafi Well, although a rather harsh dictatorship, Libya was at the time one (bit.ly was registered in 2008) of the more stable and prosperous countries of the region, and had been normalizing its international relations for some time. That was just after he had been received in France, erecting his tent on the lawn of the state guesthouse next to the French presidential palace. I don't think many people expected the dramatical events that occurred soon after. But it's true, I personally think one should never use the TLD of a dictatorship or unstable country for obvious ethical reasons and for future-proofing a business.
- nocoiner 3y agoYes, this is an excellent point. I guess I’m old enough where I primarily associate Gaddafi with “mercurial dictator” than the chaos after he was toppled. And 100% agree with your last paragraph. Cool visualizations on your site, by the way.
- ehPReth 3y agofun trick with bit.ly (and bit.ly-hosted shorteners): add a + to the end of the URL to see where it leads. in past times you could also see stats, but they killed that :/
- guessmyname 3y ago> bit.ly/FOOBAR+ That, or add “.info” at the end, e.g. goo.gl/FOOBAR.info Many other URL shorteners copied Google and Bitly’s approach so adding “+” or “.info” at the end of short URLs usually reveals the hidden redirection without hitting the final website.
- DeathArrow 3y agoEven a simple link like site.com/jobs/id can be used for tracking as id can contain both the job ID and a person's ID.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y agoYeah, I’m pretty sure that was the case. There was always a redirect to the job posting which had a different identifier in the end URL. I didn’t expect to have an effect on their analytics; it was just gravy that I seemed to.
- japanman185 3y ago[dead]
- nyanpasu64 3y agoOn Firefox you could set network.http.redirection-limit to 0, and check the response headers in F12 for the redirect target (which the browser doesn't load for you).
- caseyh 3y agoOr use curl.