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          Facebook Change Ensures Tracking by Preventing URL Stripping

   Adam Engst

   Many sites add parameters to marketing campaigns for tracking purposes.
   Along with the UTM parameters that you've likely seen at some point,
   notable examples include the Facebook Click Identifier (fbclid), Google
   Click Identifier (gclid), and Microsoft Click Identifier (msclkid).
   Whenever we put links in TidBITS, we remove all unnecessary parameters
   to prevent our readers from being further sucked into the social media
   sausage machine. More important, [1]Brave has automatically stripped
   tracking parameters from URLs since 2020, and [2]Mozilla just added URL
   stripping to Firefox 102.

   So much for that. According to Martin Brinkmann at ghacks.net,
   [3]Facebook has changed its URL scheme to prevent Brave, Firefox, and
   others from stripping URL parameters. Instead of using parameters that
   can be identified and removed, Facebook now combines the page address
   with the tracking parameters in an encrypted blob. Remove that blob
   from a Facebook URL and anyone who clicks will end up on Facebook, but
   not at the desired page.

   Considering this move in the light of [4]yet another insightful
   condemnation of social media,we encourage everyone to focus on real
   people in the real world and avoid social media like the corrosive
   pestilence that it is.

   [5]Read original article

References

   1. https://brave.com/privacy-updates/5-grab-bag/
   2. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-firefox-privacy-feature-strips-urls-of-tracking-parameters/
   3. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/07/17/facebook-has-started-to-encrypt-links-to-counter-privacy-improving-url-stripping/
   4. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
   5. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/07/17/facebook-has-started-to-encrypt-links-to-counter-privacy-improving-url-stripping/

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