Mozilla is introducing a new feature to Firefox aimed at protecting users from bounce trackers, the browser developer has announced. Bounce tracking is a technique where a user clicks a link but ends up reaching their intended destination via an intermediary tracking page. This allows trackers to place and read 'first-party cookies,' which aren’t blocked by the browser, unlike third-party
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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This is exceptionally frustrating.
If someone posts a YouTube link on Facebook it will show the thumbnail and the description and that’s it. There’s literally no way to locate the video because it obscures the address, ensuring that the only way to reach that link is by clicking it and running through Facebook’s tracking system (l.facebook.com).
YouTube itself has also begun doing the same thing, obscuring the title and channel in the browser, so you can’t even search for the video via FreeTube or NewPipe or anything else.
Reddit is also doing this now by hijacking links and redirecting to out.reddit.com
Sad days.
This is why we use extensions
I have all kinds of software that are supposed to stop this. They don’t work.
I even manually add the tracking domains and they still don’t work.
Its called using third party front ends. The extensions just redirect and replace
I’m all ears, what ya got?
Extensions or front ends?
For extensions I use libredirect and for YouTube I use invidious. Libreredirect redirects YouTube links and replaces embedded YouTube videos.
None of those frontends work. Every single time they just take me to a dead site.
Twitter also was one of the first hijacking links a long time ago.
Unsurprising. But yeah I see them everywhere now.
How about stopping link hover from showing its own nonsense in the status line, Mozilla. The status line should always show the real link destination.
thats the website maker’s fault, not the browser’s
No it’s the browser’s fault for enabling the deception. You have to assume that any given website is malicious. The browser is a security product that is supposed to be on our side and protect us from evil websites. Blaming the website for exploiting protection failures puts the responsibility in the wrong place. It’s like taking counterfeit antibiotics, getting sick, and blaming the germs.
It could only know that by navigating to the link in the background. That would have side effects, like them being able to track you even when you don’t click on links.
I don’t pretend to know how any of this works, but the link is obviously already there in the browser, otherwise it couldn’t direct you to it.
But it doesn’t always point to the destination. Instead, it points to another page that then redirects you to the destination.
Your browser does not know the address of the destination, only the addresss of the middleman tracking webpage.
See other reply
The point of this is that it’s a redirect. The link isn’t taking you to xyz.com, it’s going to abc.com which redirects to xyz.com. The abc.com server redirects to the second link – there’s no way to know where it’ll take you unless you follow it.
Except if you hover over it, the browser will show you where it’s redirecting to and not the tracking URL. That’s the whole point.
Fine! If there’s Javascript fuckery going on, then the status line should say “WARNING: JAVASCRIPT FUCKERY!”
That should just be the title bar now
If the link is to a redirector then that’s what should show in the status line.