Tracking Parameters

Every day we click on links shared through social media, email campaigns, online advertisements, and instant messaging apps.

Many of these links contain small pieces of information appended to a web address that help organizations track where visitors come from and how we interact with their websites. This additional information is called tracking parameters.

Tracking parameters are useful for analytics, but they raise important privacy concerns, because they allow the organizations to know their user's navigation habits like which site they visited or which post they have read or who shared with them a link address, before entering a web site.

By using tracking parameters, the organizations can know who you are personally connected to, without asking for your consent.

Understanding how they work and how you can remove them can help you keep your online privacy.

The tracking parameters are added at the end of a URL. These parameters typically appear after a question mark (?) and each parameter is separated by an ampersand (&). For example:

• https://www.example.com/product?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=holiday_sale

In this web address:

• utm_source=facebook indicates the visitor came from Facebook.
• utm_campaign=holiday_sale identifies the marketing campaign.

In many cases, you can manually remove the tracking parameters before visiting or sharing a link.

• Example 1
• Original URL: https://www.example.com/article?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=promo
• Clean URL: https://www.example.com/article
• Example 2
• Original URL: https://www.example.com/?fbclid=ABC123XYZ
• Clean URL: https://www.example.com/

Take note, some parameters are required for the website to function correctly, so you can opt for a URL cleaning extension like URL Valet. These extensions can identify tracking parameters and remove them before you access a specific web sita or before you share the link with other users.

Even better, you can opt for a secure web browser like: Brave or Firefox.

Interested in your email's privacy? You can use ProtonMail.