There are URL shortener Apps on F-Droid. Simple share the link to this app and get a short link without this privacy mess.
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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If you're still using firefox, right click -> copy clean link. works most of the time.
edit: on desktop, idk if mobile supports it or not. Good suggestions below though for mobile.
URL Cleaner on f-droid.org is a great app too!
I just searched and found this one:
The code is open source, and it supports several ways to install it on your device (PWA, shortcut, bookmarklet, and more).
Everything after the ? can be safely removed
This is usually true but but not always. There's often times when a URL query like that is used to choose the page to load. I believe wordpress does this
Only on "I have really bad SEO" kinds of blogs. Query strings have been considered a negative thing for many many years.
whuh? querystrings are integral to things like pagination. they are by no means a negative thing.
It’s really weird how SEO snake oil salesmen have broken the web.
The “no query parameter” rule is such a dogma to the cult that your normal tooling for pages has to go through some weird ass hoops so that it can show up instead as a slug in the URL.
I hate SEO and SEO peddlers
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I usually just do it because shorter links look better than 30 lines of crap
Right? The fact that this is an extra bit of tracking information I don't want makes this an easy sell for anyone looking for a reason to do this, but for me it's because it just makes links uglier.
PSA if you are worried about link parameters giving away where you came from, you should really be worried about HTTP Referrer headers, which are of course turned on by default in most browsers. Be advised turning them off may break some (parts of) certain websites, but most still work fine in my experience.
In Firefox go to about:config page and set network.http.sendRefererHeader to 0.
Or change them to 127.0.0.1 and get rid of some web app firewalls and restrictions
This is kinda true but also kinda fear mongering. UTM parameters are just to track where you clicked the link from. They're usually not dynamic, and don't contain anything about you personally. The example in the screenshot utm_source=newsletter is probably added to all links in a company's newsletter email, so they can tell that people get to the page via the newsletter.
As someone who has link tracking in our business, yes, some of the stuff after the ? isn't nefarious tracking, like the utm mentioned above.
All the "list-unsubscribe" options you may have noticed starting about a year ago, are actually required to be there for any company that sends out any kind of email newsletter over a certain threshold. (Lists around 5k or more)
If the unsubscribe links aren't there, with the required url-encoded parameters (along with some other requirements with DNS) the email will not be delivered to any of the majors (google, yahoo/aol, hotmail, big ISPs) and we get blocked.
The unsubscribe parameters are being tracked, yes, but we have to have them so we can unsubscribe you "in one click" We are not allowed to require you to sign in to unsubscribe you. (Not that we ever did that, but now there must be a one-click option.)
(We used to just be two clicks to unsubscribe off an encoded link. Click -> this you? If yes, click -> you are now unsubscribed. Or sign-in and manage subscriptions without an encoded link.)
Again, the point is that not all url encoded tracking is nefarious. Some of it is now required to try and minimize spam and nefarious emails.
Source: https://craft.postmark-testing.com/blog/2024-gmail-yahoo-email-requirements
On iOS / iPadOS , you can use a Siri Shortcut called Clean URLs.
Just share the URL with the shortcut, through the share sheet option, and your clean url is automatically copied into the clipboard.
Yep!
Only thing I want to see after a ? in a youtube url is t=4m20s
personally i like v=aO82NftCga to be in there as well
This belongs more on Technology and Privacy communities.
For Android users at least, I recommend the Léon URL Cleaner app, when you share a link from many common sources to the URL Cleaner, it removes all that tracking shit for you, and copies the cleaned link to the clipboard.
This belongs more on Technology and Privacy communities.
I guess it was posted here to reach a broader audience.
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The only way to be safe and private online is to not be online.
Time to put new privacy laws in place or force politicans to do it
ClearURLs was my go to on Firefox, I think it's still great but it gave me trouble on a couple of sites because it modified the url in the address bar (it was like AliExpress and shopee, Chinese e-commerce sites that look like a web dev vomited, so I hardly blame ClearURLs)
Firefox also now has "copy clean link" when you right click the url bar which also works great.
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I use an app called "Leon URL Cleaner" from F-Droid. Does a really good job removing tracking params, and only adds one extra step to sharing a URL.
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I did not know what those were for before seeing this but I remeber seeing "source=chat_gpt" next to a link to a source in a news article and thought that it was odd.
That just means that the idiot writing the article got the link provided to them by chatgpt during their research. All it does is tell the website that you visited that you followed a link from the given source. They can aggregate the data from all visitors for metrics, to see where they lag behind in exposure. But they can't associate users to each other with this method.
Unlike the "igsh" tag in instagram post/reel urls, which when opened, will immediately create a popup stating "join on Instagram today!"
hey you, yeah you, you're finally awake