this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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How does firefox determine which params are trackers and which params are required data?
So how long before they start changing the param names? Lol
You mean this? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/
Changing those param names can actually be pretty complex, because they're used for all sorts of analytics. Whole ad campaigns revolve around those codes, behind the scenes.
I don't want to give these people any ideas, but you can just pseudo randomize parameter names and decode them server side before storing them for analytics, so this is a non issue.
So just a set of strings determined to be used for tracking among a set of hosts? It's not like I have a better solution, but I feel like making this anti-tracking method encourages more complex tracking params. At some point, I wouldn't be surprised to see randomly generated query parameter keys which are resolved server side, making this approach impossible.
I completely agree with you, but this is always the problem isn't it? It's a cat and mouse game. If the mouse learns techniques to hide from the cat the cat develops better techniques to find the mouse. It's not a reason for the mouse to stop hiding.