PrivacyBadger un-tracks Twitter's t.co links

2017-11-02

This totally slipped under my radar this summer, but it turns out that PrivacyBadger, the browser privacy tool by the EFF, has already for a while been replacing all t.co URLs (the links that Twitter publishes in Tweets in order to track who clicks on them) with the canonical URL of the real link target.

This is huge! It is the response by EFF to Twitter ending their support for respecting the Do-Not-Track (DNT) flag web users can set in their browsers.

A similar technique used on Google search result pages have been one of many reasons that I switched to using a search engine that doesn’t track me more than three years ago. I just don’t see in what way it would be justified that anybody monitors what links I am clicking on.

I'm Sebastian, Sociologist and Interaction Designer. This journal is mostly about bringing together social science and design for inclusive, privacy-focused, and sustainable "human-first" digital strategies. I also tend to a "digital garden" with carefully curated resources.

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