An open-source Chrome Extension that will remove the tracking parameters from URLs to keep them short and cleaner for sharing, bookmarking, etc. It will also skip any known redirects and take you straight to the target URL instead of passing you through an intermediate URL.
License: MIT License
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Hi @newhouse, thanks for a great extension!
On FB, I often want to copy a link and paste it somewhere, but don't want the ugly FB tracking redirect there. Could you please, either:
Another option would be to process all links on page, maybe in a special mode only, like in https://github.com/nokeya/direct-links-out, but option 2 above seems like a simpler and faster choice imo.
It's Facebook's new tracker, and it breaks website caching:
https://www.reddit.com/r/analytics/comments/9o52yw/parameter_called_fbclid_appearing_in_referrals/
Thanks for your consideration.
First, GREAT extension, thank you!!! I like the context menu approach, but it would be a real click saver if there was a second option that just open the cleaned link in a new tab. :0)
Hi. I'm a search engine guy, and I'm very interested in a well-tested list of strippable CGI args to reduce the work my crawler has to do. I tried to algorithmicly build a list by taking the top 1000 websites from an old Alexa list, plus a few hosts I care about, and took a sample of their URLs crawled by CommonCrawl, and then counting which cgi args appeared in many of the hosts.
The biggest was &utm_source appearing on 474 of the 1,000 hosts. I dropped everything fewer than 5 hosts. So, in theory, this is somewhat of a representative sample of the most popular ones... although CommonCrawl isn't totally representative of the web, of course.
Here is a list with examples of the ones that aren't currently in your configuration:
# more utm_ -- I think people use utm_ as a prefix for their own purposes and/or Google doesn't document all of them
# https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/?f=30&ref=producthunt&utm_expid=71153379-28.SNKFJ4VqRziIW1TLqjhpAw.1&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
utm_expid (15 hosts)
utm_referrer (12 hosts)
# https://www.etsy.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=etsy&utm_campaign=search_fr_fr-fr-src-pure-brand-exact-st_exact_etsy&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIk6Duvp6\
n1QIVjantCh1f-whGEAAYASAAEgLsx_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
gclsrc 22 hosts
# https://www.google.fr/chrome/browser/features.html?brand=CHBD&gclid=CN6B2tjusdECFVAQ0wodfmcISw&dclid=CM6vjtnusdECFcSjUQodyg4B2Q
dclid 21 hosts {similar to gclid?}
normally cookies
# Adobe ColdFusion
# https://techcrunch.com/?CFID=8494701&CFTOKEN=56974155
&CFID= 25 hosts, 70 total instances
&CFTOKEN= 25 hosts, 70 total instances
# PHP
# http://instagram.com/p/BUPpEcIDFjT/?PHPSESSID=dbj4v5fl2c6sd8f8986aprqpf3
&PHPSESSID= 5 hosts, 89 total instances
and here are the popular ones that you don't have at all:
# Web Trends
# http://www.nature.com/collections/dtfkmdgglg?WT.mc_id=SFB_NA_1017_FattyLiverGraphic
# https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/b/accessories?tid=vpOCJmmq&cid=5250&pcrid=3050714533&pkw=makerbot%20replicator%202%20desktop%203d%20printer&pmt=e&WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=pointitsem_Microsoft+US_bing_5+-+Accessories&WT.term=make
# https://www.chase.com/ccp/index.jsp?pg_name=ccpmapp/shared/assets/page/repayment_examples&WT.ac=st_ctr_student&jp_aid=st_ctr_student&WT.mc_id=st_ctr_student_repayment&jp_mep=st_ctr_student_repayment&WT.pn_sku=repayment_plans&memberid=studentcenter
# https://www.intuit.com/company/press-room/press-releases/2013/QuickenPullsBacktheCoversonLoveandMoney/?WT.qs_osrc=TST-164886110
&WT.mc_id= 24 hosts, 2530 total instances
&WT.srch= 14 hosts, 422 total instances
&WT.ac= 8 hosts, 4094 total instances
&WT.qs_osrc= 5 hosts, 20 total instances
&WT.pn_sku
# Oracle Eloqua
# http://www.cray.com/company/policies-and-practices/privacy-policy?elqTrackId=2e97d2d4f56e41eb9498379bab9753db&elqaid=584&elqat=2
# http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Collaborate/Resources/Webinars-and-Demos.aspx?elq=a318adfc3e7e40de83e0883a1d6760ba&elqCampaignId=329
&elqTrackId= 12 hosts, 191 total instances
&elqaid= 12 hosts, 189 total instances
&elqat= 12 hosts, 189 total instances
&elqCampaignId= 7 hosts, 138 total instances
&elq= 7 hosts, 111 total instances
# comScore Digital Analytix:
# http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/article-5082539/France-23-28-New-Zealand-Blacks-French.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
# http://www.hotstar.com/tv/cineplay/13080?ns_mchannel=Article&ns_source=Scroll&ns_campaign=Cineplay&ns_linkname=CineplayShowPage&ns_fee=0
&ns_campaign= 6 hosts, 97 total instances
&ns_mchannel= 5 hosts, 92 total instances
&ns_source=
&ns_linkname=
&ns_fee=
# suspicious but probably too generic
# https://www.cray.com/?leadsource=website&srcdes=seagate&campaign=7010b0000018kLW
&campaign= 15 hosts, 9072 total instances
# https://wordpress.com/create/?utm_source=bing&utm_campaign=WordPress-Generic-Exact-US-GP&utm_medium=cpc&keyword=wordpress&creative=9925335912&campaignid=12806\
5278&adgroupid=3099786316&matchtype=e&device=c&network=o
&campaignid= 6 hosts, 74 total instances
Reddit links still have that after being stripped. Awesome extension otherwise.
User commented in Chrome Webstore:
Great addon, but really needs a whitelist so you can disable it for sites it breaks.
[At the moment, of course.]
Is it likely to get "?src=[*]" removed if the queries are tracking things?
Example:
http://remedydaily.com/2016/05/23/osteoporosis-risk-factors-symptoms-and-treatment/?src=bottomxpromo&ro=3&et=syn&eid=53157&pid=52170&syn=bcs&t=mxp
only requires
http://remedydaily.com/2016/05/23/osteoporosis-risk-factors-symptoms-and-treatment
to load, but the rest is eating up my bookmark space and my time.
It isn't useful for me to get targeted content, since I open EVERY link in a new tab.
Example URLs:
- http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;274204538;98873843;y?http://www.food.com/recipe/cuban-pork-adobo-salad-501729
- http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;272664759;101583304;i?http://www.porkbeinspired.com/RecipeDetail/2770/Cuban_Pork_Adobo_Salad.aspx
As you can see, doubleclick track link doesn't put target URL in any parameters, targetParam method can't fit this case.
I'd like to propose to use regex for parsing target URLs also keep the current "param" parse method:
Add targetRegex:
{
name: 'Doubleclick',
targetRegex: /\?(.*)$/,
// targetParam: "url",
patterns: [
`${SCHEMA}ad.doubleclick.net${PATH}?`
],
types: ['main_frame']
}OR
Add parseMethod to make it explicit:
{
name: 'Doubleclick',
parseMethod: "regex", // Accepts: "param" | "regex"
target: /\?(.*)$/, // Accept types: string | regex
patterns: [
`${SCHEMA}ad.doubleclick.net${PATH}?`
],
types: ['main_frame']
}OR
Use target: (one property to rule them all)
{
name: 'Doubleclick',
target: /\?(.*)$/, // Accept types: string | regex
patterns: [
`${SCHEMA}ad.doubleclick.net${PATH}?`
],
types: ['main_frame']
}However, this implementation requires a major revamp, so would like to hear some feedback.
Sites like facebook and google won't let you copy external urls. Instead they put a verbose tracking url in your clipboard. Normally I go through the hassle of opening the tracking url and copying the destination from my address bar before sharing it.
To simplify this process I extended your plugin to listen for any copy events and rewrite urls in the clipboard data. If this isn't considered out of scope I could create a PR for it.
Try to login on masteroverwatch.com via battle.net, for example.
I think it's a bad idea to remove such generic trackers.
Does not strip the tracking from links on Facebook.
Could it please handle google search results such as
Some sites place tracking information in the fragment identifier portion of the URL, for example:
https://www.example.com/russia-sought-to-emulate-us-exceptionalism#.aBcDeFg123
The only thing these fragment identifiers tend to have in common is that they begin with a dot, and (weakly) have non-wordlike qualities.
I think it would be interesting to look into blocking these. Thanks!
Hi
WordPress has addon for referal links. Result of its work is hidden affiliate links
I found service which can decrypt / decode URLs
https://prozavr.ru/tools/rasshifrovka-korotkih-ssilok.php
So, if we will put link https://www.kobzarev.com/r/smmbox in service above we will get next:
https://www.kobzarev.com/r/smmbox/ https://smmbox.com/c/349271 https://smmbox.com/?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=partner&utm_medium=partner
But page is only https://smmbox.com/
Can u add this funclionality 2 exclude this stupid refferal links?
https://www.facebook.com/stormmedia/posts/1304439293071111
This article include srcid parameters, could you add new rules? Thank you!
For the past couple days I've noticed some tracking stuff slipping through.
The latest example:
Hello there!
Could you block this tracker?
http://cj.dotomi.com/links-t/7988357/type/dlg/sid/0d007952wvav/http://www.forever21.com/mx/
target url: http://www.forever21.com/mx/
_hsmi
_hsenc
ref
fref
fb_ref
fb_action_ids
fb_action_types
fb_ref
fb_source
hc_location
action_object_map
action_type_map
action_ref_map
Regards 
Lovely extension, thanks!
After installing I'm still seeing this extremely long and ugly riftinfo parameter in urls on Redfin.com
Not sure what it is, possibly a token for some kind of Occulus Rift VR home tour?
Is this a parameter you could add to the list?
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Coupeville/301-Kinney-St-NE-98239/home/16696480?utm_source=myredfin&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=recommendations_update&riftinfo=ZXY9ZW1haWwmbD0yOTI3NzcwMSZwPWxpc3RpbmdfdXBkYXRlc19yZWNvbW1lbmRhdGlvbnMmYT1jbGljayZzPXJlY29tbWVuZGF0aW9ucyZ0PWFkZHJlc3MmZW1haWxfaWQ9MjkyNzc3MDFfMTU2NDE5MjEzMV82JnVwZGF0ZV90eXBlPTEmbGlscl9zY29yZT0wLjQ1MjEmbGlzdGluZ19pZD0xMTA4MTUyMDQmcHJvcGVydHlfaWQ9MTY2OTY0ODAmcG9zaXRpb25fbnVtYmVyPTg=
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Coupeville/301-Kinney-St-NE-98239/home/16696480?riftinfo=ZXY9ZW1haWwmbD0yOTI3NzcwMSZwPWxpc3RpbmdfdXBkYXRlc19yZWNvbW1lbmRhdGlvbnMmYT1jbGljayZzPXJlY29tbWVuZGF0aW9ucyZ0PWFkZHJlc3MmZW1haWxfaWQ9MjkyNzc3MDFfMTU2NDE5MjEzMV82JnVwZGF0ZV90eXBlPTEmbGlscl9zY29yZT0wLjQ1MjEmbGlzdGluZ19pZD0xMTA4MTUyMDQmcHJvcGVydHlfaWQ9MTY2OTY0ODAmcG9zaXRpb25fbnVtYmVyPTg=
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Coupeville/301-Kinney-St-NE-98239/home/16696480
Right now your configuration list of cgi args is expressed as source. This certainly gets the job done, but, it might be a lot prettier to move the list into a data file. And then it would be easier to share the list among projects, like my crawler in Python (hidden agenda alert :-))
For a format, it could be YAML, or this is a simpler way:
# name
# example
prefix name
prefix name
so
# Adobe ColdFusion
# https://techcrunch.com/?CFID=8494701&CFTOKEN=56974155
CF ID
CF TOKEN
In this example 'CF' is what your code calls the ROOT.
This format also makes diffs more useful, in that each line has the full meaning. So if I this line in a diff
+utm_ expid
I know at a glance the full name of the CGI arg that will be matched.
I know an issue isn’t necessarily the best place to ask this question, but I’m wondering if you’ve seen any apps for iOS that perform this functionality, say, by seeing what’s on the clipboard and, if it’s a url, giving you the chance to copy the tracking-removed url to the clipboard instead.
I find that the majority of times I remove tracking identifiers by hand, it’s when I’m messaging a shared link to a friend, which usually happens on my phone. I am not an app developer, but I have considered learning Swift just to be able to write an app like this. If someone else has already beaten me to the punch, I’d be glad for it.
In your research trying to address the issue, have you seen anything like that?
UTM on this site isn't stripped:
Furthermore i've noticed that GA seems to be able to track my screen resolution upon clicking, or hovering "Next" on the second (not the first) page of google search results (&biw= &bih= &ei=)
User asked for it on google chrome review. Good idea.
Can you please remove everything after the question mark (?) from Amazon giveaways?
Poll
https://smile.amazon.com/ga/p/3c5173cbe53cb287?nav=amz&fsrc=glp&ref_=pe_2644850_235117830_gde#ln-pl
Twitter
https://smile.amazon.com/ga/p/59eafb91ec2b41c9?nav=amz&fsrc=glp&ref_=pe_2644850_234975030_gde#ts-tw
YouTube
https://smile.amazon.com/ga/p/fa9f12bafd7e4261?nav=amz&fsrc=glp&ref_=pe_2644850_234975030_gde#ln-yt
Thank you!
I want find locations contact & by number mobile
Whenever I search for something on google I find some useful links in the ad-section.
And if you hover over a link it looks ok, but if you copy it you get a googleadservices link that will redirect to the one it showed in the statusbar.
You think you could fix the link? :)
Keep up the great work :)
Ove B-)
The website RedFlagDeals is pretty horrible in replacing URLs with affiliate/tracking redirects. The practice is pretty pernicious since all the actually useful content is user generated and any URLs posted in the forum are auto converted to affiliate/tracking redirects without providing any real notice.
Anyway, is it possible to introduce simple pattern detection to remove affiliate/tracking redirects? The Firefox add-on Clean-Links used to do this really well, but it has unfortunately been discontinued (and didn't work with chrome).
EXAMPLES
Is it possible to clean Amazon links by cleaning affiliate links?
This example from Facebook Glen Hansard ad:
If I click on it, no indication given.
If I paste into URL bar, indication IS given. Probably due to behavior of knowing tab id/url stuff on when to indicate an impact.
//youtu.be/foo => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foo
Also y2u.be works like youtu.be but is not run by google (!) That can't be good
https://redd.it/7tczf9 => https://www.reddit.com/tb/7tczf9
https://app.instapage.com/route/9475232/?url=www.nat.ai/careers => http://www.nat.ai/careers
With this extension enabled, links to specific support.steampowered.com Steam Support articles, e.g. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8625-wrah-9030 get redirected to the main Steam Support page at https://help.steampowered.com/en/ instead of to the expected article page.
This will not allow you to view the specific articles, probably because the ?ref=8625-wrah-9030 part gets removed. There should either be an exception for this or a way to allow users to configure exceptions for specific URLs.
Not sure if the feature has been added yet, but I can't seem to find an extension which removes the outbound tracking of links on YouTube (IE: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=) It would be nice to see such thing added.
Many thanks.
Please add edge support, as it is not fully working with it
A new extension from microsoft store should be great or an option to switch between "edge.tabs" instead of "chrome.tabs" and maybe some other lines code from current extension
Remove tracking and redirection of links from twitter
This is what happens with the extension if you click on, say, a Target.com url https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/11/28/target-unveils-black-friday-discounts-best-deals-start-november-27th/:
The link you clicked on requires cookies to be enabled in your browser. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Without the extension, the redirect works fine, and future redirects work fine too (so test in Incognito after you click through without the extension).
Example of where you end up with this dead end: http://go.trafficrouter.io/?res=nc&original=http%3A%2F%2Fgoto.target.com%2Fc%2F10078%2F81938%2F2092%3FsubId1%3D85009X1537243X7fb27be2aa63f0ce7ba48456a8d440d2%26sharedId%3Dandroidpolice.com%26u%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.target.com%252Fp%252Famazon-echo-dot-3rd-generation%252F-%252FA-54148143%26level%3D4&dst=&brid=&dstsig=
What is it about the extension that breaks such links and can it be fixed?
Thanks.
Google Calendar wraps URLs within events so that they look like:
This should be stripped back to:
With the extension enabled, when mousing over a link, it shows the unstripped URL, yet clicking the link will navigate to the stripped version. I'm guessing the mouseover URL is unaffected because of the implementation only intercepting at click-time, not during page load / render:
The extension doesn't do any DOM parsing, but rather uses available APIs (webRequest.onBeforeRequest for navigation intercepts and contextMenu.create.onclick for right-clicks) to know about what the URL is.
I don't know how easy it would be to achieve, but I think it would definitely be less misleading if the mouseover URL was the exact URL which gets visited when the link is clicked. It's slightly scary to realise that a malware extension could hijack any innocent click and take the user somewhere they really don't want to go. So in the interests of keeping this benign extension as honest and transparent as possible, IMHO it would be worth fixing the mouseover, if that is technically feasible.
Instagram adds a "saved-by" parameter to links presented on the user "saved posts" page, so that when such a URL is shared it provides strong connections in the invisible social graph. For example:
https://www.instagram.com/p/xxxxxxxxxxx/?saved-by=user
Please consider stripping the "saved-by" parameter. Thanks.
I see that Gmail are doing something really evil with hyperlinks within emails:
<a href="https://link.to.other.site" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=link.to.other.site&source=gmail&ust=1534942837200000&usg=AFQjCNH3Pzb1Mq6zL847zzh6iqd4g1B3IA">here</a>
This is also described here:
I really don't want google tracking which links I click on. I'm sure Google would claim that they're doing the user a favour by hiding referrer data from the target web server, but only because they're stealing that data for themselves!
So I think it would be great if this project stripped these data-saferedirecturl links.
In the options. That'd be great!
Perhaps implement was is suggested in #55 but only for right-click-copies.
The spm parameter is used on websites operated by Alibaba and its related companies. Here are some documentation (in Chinese):
I'll summary some in English:
spm stands for super position model, it's basically the same as the utm_ parameters used by Google Analytics.https://cn.aliyun.com/about?spm=5176.8142029.631162.about.702b614aLj4URY, it contains the spm parameter, and its value is 5176.8142029.631162.about.702b614aLj4URY.
spm parameter is formatted like this: spm=spmA.spmB.spmC.spmD.spmEspmA identifies a website;spmB identifies a page on that website;spmC identifies a block on that page;spmD further identifies a specific position in that block;spmE is a random string generated with current time, which could distinguish visits of the same link from each other by time;You could visit website of Aliyun or Aliexpress to see the spm parameter in action. I really like this extension for its simplicity and effectiveness to block utm and other tracking parameters, and I hope you could consider adding spm to that list too.
I forked this repository and found the right file to modify, but unfortunately I have not yet figured out how to build it. Maybe you could add some instructions about building the extension to README, if you have time?
Thank you again for this amazing extension.
I received this link in my email, which actually tracked my activities.
https://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=64774093&msgid=508026&act=MJAY&c=1180968&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.HireWriters.com%2Flogin
It went to the link then later redirected me to hirewriters.com/login
Could you please include it in the add on? Respond soon
Hi, I have noticed this extension is not working on YouTube right now, I am not sure if its because of something specific to my setup, I am running Opera with the extension that allows you to run Chrome extensions would that be a problem?
An important thing I should note, when I manually right click the url and select "Copy and Clean link" from the context menu it works fine (as it should) and the tracking gets removed.
So to sum up, I don't think automatic tracking removal is working on YouTube.
Stripped url: https://cbdfx.com/products/cbd-capsules-750mg
Thanks!
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