Cloacked links (Google chat and perhaps elsewhere)
Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 3:07 pm
I use google chat a lot both personally and professionally and I really dislike how Google rewrites the URL's that I send to family and colleagues. It's really nosy of them to track what links we click. It shouldn't be any of their business and I consider it to be a violation of our privacy. Here's a concrete example. I sent myself a link to the AdBlockPlus website from one of my other google accounts and what you see below is how Google constructed the hyperlink.
The original link has been rewritten from this: https://adblockplus.org/
To this: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ad ... E_SctNnWrQ
Interestingly, Google doesn't do this for their own URL's. For example, if I share a youtube video in Google chat the URL does not get rewritten as can be seen here:
My proposal: When the hyperlink text is a url and the hyperlink text does not match the href attribute of the hyperlink then the href attribute of the hyperlink should be replaced with the hyperlink text. I'm willing to help develop this feature if there's any interest in it.
Code: Select all
<a rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://adblockplus.org/&sa=D&source=hangouts&ust=1551362671051000&usg=AFQjCNEFySHczplshi84HQvqE_SctNnWrQ" class="Xx" tabindex="-1" dir="ltr" data-display="https://adblockplus.org/" data-sanitized="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://adblockplus.org/&sa=D&source=hangouts&ust=1551362671051000&usg=AFQjCNEFySHczplshi84HQvqE_SctNnWrQ">https://adblockplus.org/</a>
To this: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ad ... E_SctNnWrQ
Interestingly, Google doesn't do this for their own URL's. For example, if I share a youtube video in Google chat the URL does not get rewritten as can be seen here:
Code: Select all
<a rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ujgMjMnLd8" class="Xx" tabindex="-1" dir="ltr" data-display="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ujgMjMnLd8" data-sanitized="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ujgMjMnLd8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ujgMjMnLd8</a>