"Copy Link Without Site Tracking" now on @firefox ! ๐
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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Personally, I have found this feature to be too limited. I still use the ClearURLs extension, which is more effective in my experience.
However, neither one is a silver bullet. Here's an example I just took from Amazon (I blocked out some values with X's):
Original URL:
https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H/ref=XXXX?qid=XXXXXXXXXX&refinements=p_XXXXXXXXXXXXX&rps=1&s=sporting-goods&sr=XXXUsing Firefox's "copy link without site tracking" feature:
https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H/ref=XXXX?qid=XXXXXXXXXX&refinements=p_XXXXXXXXXXXXX&rps=1&s=sporting-goodsUsing ClearURLs:
https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H?refinements=p_XXXXXXXXXXXXX&rps=1The ideal, canonical URL, which no tools I'm familiar with will reliably generate:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C353845HLonger but still fully de-personalized URL:
https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845HIf anybody knows a better solution that works with a wide variety of sites, please share!
To be honest it should not be that hard to write a browser extension that just strips away all query parameters. That's just a simple string match for the question mark and deleting everything after it.
The problems begin when sites start implementing other URL shenanigans like your /ref=XXXX? example.
The workable solution there would be to have the extension match user defined patterns for different sites.
The problem with a nuclear solution like that is that some sites use query parameters as actual query parameters. Like DuckDuckGo.