More Youtube tracking

[Swordsmyth]

[Brian4Liberty]

LOL, is this news to anyone? I have mentioned it many times here. It's not just Youtube. Many shared links have tracking embedded in the link, and it's a unique identifier that can track every thing about you. They can store everything known about you at the time you click to share the link. It could include any user ids that they may have on you, what time you clicked, which applications and system you were running, etc. If they wanted to be illegal about it, they may even snap a pic of you when you click on the "share" link. They store this information on their systems. The tracking id just leads back to that specific captured information.

[Valli6]

Is their some rule of thumb for determining the tracking/identifier part?

I can only guess, so sometimes just ignore it. Wastes a lot of time to keep altering and then testing links, and some stuff doesn't show up for a while, even if it's actually working (What caused that change to occur anyway? Is it this site specifically? A software update I did? Or something else out there on the web?)

Sometimes I notice a lot of stuff attached - like multiple lines of it. Sometimes I see a question mark thrown in with some numbers. Not clear on which parts matter. Sometimes I use the "Reply with Quote" function on other peoples' posts - just to check how other people are handling it. But I 'm mostly guessing.

On the other hand, I don't have many actual accounts. No youtube, twitter or gmail. I haven't had a youtube account since google took over, so hope that helps protect me, BUT it seems like it wouldn't be hard for them to create an identifier of anonymous persons based on their IP address. This would allow them to keep a folder on the individual anyway. Does that happen?

[Brian4Liberty]

Is their some rule of thumb for determining the tracking/identifier part?

I can only guess, so sometimes just ignore it. Wastes a lot of time to keep altering and then testing links, and some stuff doesn't show up for a while, even if it's actually working (What caused that change to occur anyway? Is it this site specifically? A software update I did? Or something else out there on the web?)

Sometimes I notice a lot of stuff attached - like multiple lines of it. Sometimes I see a question mark thrown in with some numbers. Not clear on which parts matter. Sometimes I use the "Reply with Quote" function on other peoples' posts - just to check how other people are handling it. But I 'm mostly guessing.

On the other hand, I don't have many actual accounts. No youtube, twitter or gmail. I haven't had a youtube account since google took over, so hope that helps protect me, BUT it seems like it wouldn't be hard for them to create an identifier of anonymous persons based on their IP address. This would allow them to keep a folder on the individual anyway. Does that happen?

It varies. Usually, when you see a question mark "?", everything past that is trackers.

And yes, they would just create a user id for you as you use the internet. It may or may not have your "real" information. Doesn't matter for the advertisers. They just want to know what ads to throw at you based on your profile. But if they do have your real information, then they can also send you emails and things like that.

[Occam's Banana]

Is their some rule of thumb for determining the tracking/identifier part?

Everything after the first question mark in a URL is a query or instruction to a server-side database. This is often used to acquire or convey tracking information. So before using or posting a URL, try deleting the first question mark and everything after it. If it still works property, then use or post that instead.

However, some queries are "innocent", and may be required to serve the requested media.

For example, YouTube video URLs require a parameter ("v=XXXXXXXXXXX") to identify the desired video, like so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JRLCBb7qK8

(Another "innocent" YouTube parameter is "t=Xs", which tells YouTube to start playback at X seconds into the video.)

Or an "article id" parameter might be required, as in:

https://www.example.com/article?id=123456

RPFs does the same sort of thing. Here's the URL for your post - note the query part includes the thread identifier ("565148"), a post identifier ("p=7203686"), and an instruction ("viewfull=1"):

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?565148-More-Youtube-tracking&p=7203686&viewfull=1#post7203686

The hashtag bit ("#post7203686") is an "anchor tag" that tells your browser to display the page starting at that point, instead of displaying the page from the top and making you scroll down and hunt for the point you're looking for.

The upshot of all this is that it depends on the particular site as to what parts of a given URL query string are "innocent" (or not). Some sites (such as YouTube - see above) require at least some query parameters in order to function properly, while others do not. The URLs for tweets at Twitter, for example, should never need any formal query parameters at all - so if any do appear in a URL for a tweet, you should just cut them out.

On the client side, there is a great deal browsers can do to protect against tracking cruft, if they are properly configured with the relevant settings, extensions, etc. For example, if you click on a tweet embedded at RPFs (or anywhere else), the typical browser setup will open the tweet with a URL laden with tracking info - such as telling Twitter that the link was activated at RPFs.

Consider the tweet in this post. If you are using plain-vanilla Firefox and you click on it (the embedded tweet itself, I mean - not the URL posted with it), it will activate the following URL:

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1729235753392320563?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5 Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1729235753392320563%7Ctwgr% 5E0c36824473352aedc62c5b1cbc001b4fd3441ded%7Ctwcon %5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ronpaulforums.com% 2Fshowthread.php%3F552730-Postcards-from-the-Clown-Show%2Fpage101

But if you click on the same tweet while using LibreWolf (a fork of Firefox modified and configured for greater privacy and security, including anti-tracking features), it will activate the following URL, from which the browser has automatically stripped all the tracking cruft:

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1729235753392320563

[Valli6]

Thanks. Will have to copy this info and study it a bit.