[HN Gopher] TrackerZapper Mac app silently removes tracking para...
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TrackerZapper Mac app silently removes tracking parameters from
links you copy
Author : dlackty
Score : 122 points
Date : 2021-09-18 13:35 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| webwielder2 wrote:
| Does it really need to sit in my menubar?
| turadg wrote:
| Fwiw there are some apps to hide menu bar icons:
|
| - Open source https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer
|
| - Freemium https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/
|
| - $15 https://www.macbartender.com/
| JadeNB wrote:
| I've never understood why apps get the final say on what goes
| in my menubar in macOS. Skype says I need a menubar icon; I say
| I don't. Why does Skype's opinion trump mine?
| ativzzz wrote:
| Because the Apple software product model isn't built to be
| customizable by the end user.
| leppr wrote:
| I don't understand how you can be surprised at a lack of
| customization options on an Apple OS. It's literally one of
| their selling points.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's what I was thinking. On top of that, if it's _only_ a
| menubar app, why wouldn 't you write it in some platform-
| agnostic language? I have a similar "toolbar sitter" app I
| wrote with a couple Rust crates and a free afternoon, and that
| compiles to Windows/Mac/Linux fine. I guess it's more of a
| Swift exercise than a full-fledged program.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Can anyone explain how it works? Do I have to paste the link into
| the app and it opens Safari for me? A single screenshot of the
| app in action in their ReadMe could clear this up. I don't
| understand why so many GitHub projects have this problem.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I think it just listens to changes in your clipboard and if it
| detects you having copied a link, it removes all tracking
| parameters and enters that to your clipboard instead.
| Dr_Rengers wrote:
| It seems to observe the OS pasteboard. Every time you copy a
| string, it reads the value, removes tracking parameters, and
| then puts the clean string back into your pasteboard.
|
| So no action required on the user side, it's all automatic.
| re wrote:
| It's unusual to see the word "silently" used as a selling point
| these days. In headlines, it's almost always used in the context
| of some bad behavior and as such has taken on negative
| connotations for me. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=silently
|
| I plugged the title of this post into a few online sentiment
| analysis tools and they both rated it as having negative
| sentiment. If the author sees this, you might want to swap it out
| for another word like "automatically" in the readme.
| zinclozenge wrote:
| What if I want an app that loudly removes tracking parameters?
| edoceo wrote:
| Submit a PR with more cowbell.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That would be funny that a few clanks of cowbell sound
| randomly when the Cmd-C buttons are pressed.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Nice app! Have to say it's pretty clean.
|
| For those who may be looking at similar functionality in
| presxisting software, I bet you could build this with
| Hammerspoon[0] and their clipboard[1][2] apis too using lua if
| one was inclined
|
| [0]: https://www.hammerspoon.org/
|
| [1]: https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.pasteboard.html
|
| [2]: https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.pasteboard.watcher.html
| reginold wrote:
| As much as I like TrackerZapper or ClearURLs for pasting links,
| it sets a precedent of tools that modify clipboards, which is bad
| for crypto addresses.
| pbronez wrote:
| Agree. I would love to have a mobile app that did this as an
| explicit function: "copy url without tracking"
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's a legitimate concern.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I assume this only works on well known tracker formats? I don't
| see how a tool like this could distinguish necessary url
| parameters from tracking parameters unless it is going off a list
| of known tracking params.
| rexf wrote:
| They are hardcoded here
| https://github.com/rknightuk/TrackerZapper/blob/main/Tracker...
| Exuma wrote:
| "name" is definitely not a good parameter to remove...
| latchkey wrote:
| https://github.com/rknightuk/TrackerZapper/pull/8
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| Shame that this couldn't exist on iOS, where I do the majority of
| copying and pasting of links.
|
| Thanks, Apple.
| kall wrote:
| There are apps[0] that do this via the share sheet. Share is
| basically the same effort as Copy on iOS so that seems pretty
| good.
|
| In some cases, like AMP pages, simply using the share button in
| safari to copy it will get you the canonical URL, but I don't
| think that works everywhere.
|
| If you actually use a keyboard with iOS, you could find a
| shortcut that does this and assign it a global keyboard
| shortcut via Full Keyboard Access settings.
|
| [0] https://apps.apple.com/de/app/resolver-share-clean-
| urls/id14...
| dangoor wrote:
| I'm thinking that one way to get something useful along these
| lines in iOS would be a Shortcut that clears the tracking
| parameters and puts the result on the clipboard. I _think_ that
| 's possible, and then it's a matter of using the share sheet to
| get the URL into the Shortcut.
|
| Certainly has a bit more friction than this, but doesn't seem
| so bad if it could work. This (unfortunately ad-filled) page
| has an example:
|
| https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/auto-remove-annoying-trac...
| Wistar wrote:
| Same here. Editing the links on iOS is bloody difficult.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Now that Apple allows Safari extensions (with iOS 15), I wonder
| if it would be possible to create the functionality.
|
| But honestly most times I copy a link, I'm going to open it in
| Firefox Focus. Maybe they or Brave could add the feature?
| rexf wrote:
| I built a similar Mac app that removes common trackers from
| clipboard links. It works on your iPhone with Apple's Universal
| Clipboard.
|
| Copy Cleaner macOS app
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1528299767
| chromaniac wrote:
| Chrome Android copies canonical URL from the share menu. On
| desktop browser, I use a browser extension (CanonicalCopy) that
| makes available canonical link. It usually works fine on most
| websites. A lot of websites don't have canonical meta tag.
| Others have it misconfigured.
| novok wrote:
| Anyone know of windows or linux equivalents?
| C-x_C-f wrote:
| The ClearURLs addon [1] also gives you the in-browser option to
| copy "clean link location," as they call it.
|
| [1] https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon
| jaytaylor wrote:
| I tried this recently and promptly uninstalled after
| discovering Google search result links were still hijacked to
| go through a tracker redirect.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| This "TrackerZapper" seems to only address the end of the URL
| not the beginning, suffix versus prefix, right versus left.
| Tracking can of course be accomplished by prefixing or
| "shortening" URLs, too. Thats what Google, Facebook, Twitter,
| even DuckDuckGo, routinely do. These websites, and many more,
| are wont to claim that they do prefixing or shortening for
| the users benefit, e.g., to remove the Referer header, or to
| screen external URLs for "safety", however there is no
| enforceable agreement with users where the website agrees it
| will limit the use of this data to any purpose. These third
| party websites have freedom to use it however they wish.
|
| URL sanitisation is easy using a local proxy. This way we can
| have rules that are site-specific. Not every site needs it,
| but for those that do, we can write specific rules. The proxy
| also allows us to log HTTP traffic and to limit redirection
| through a variety of methods, so its easier to discover when
| attempted redirects are occuring.
|
| Every redirect is an opportunity for data collection, whether
| its used for that purpose or not. If "data is the new oil"
| then it contributes to greenhouse gases.
| TheKnack wrote:
| I tried this a while ago but had to turn it off because it made
| too many links stop working, especially URLs in emails. It also
| breaks some Google Sheets functionality.
|
| There's a request on Github to add a whitelist for sites that
| break when referral parameters are removed, but the devs
| haven't replied or commented on the request.
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(page generated 2021-09-18 23:01 UTC)