I just use "Remove Google Redirection" for Greasemonkey, so I don't have the
redirects.
Can you detect if <a ping> is enabled? If so, having a preference isn't going
to be particularly useful as sites will just fallback to the redirect method.
If it is added as a UI preference, it needs to be silent, or else the
preference is really "track via pings, or track via slower redirect".
On 2014-05-16 08:35, Jonathan Kew wrote:
> On 16/5/14 13:02, L. David Baron wrote:
>> On Friday 2014-05-16 12:49 +0100, Jonathan Kew wrote:
>>> When I click a Google search result (for example), I can see --
>>> thanks to the status overlay that shows the URLs being requested --
>>> that it's redirecting me via a Google URL that is presumably being
>>> used to track me.
>>
>> You actually don't, since Google doesn't add the tracking stuff to
>> the link until you click it. But it adds it early enough in click
>> handling so that it affects what happens when you click the link.
>>
>> To see this:
>> 1. search for something on Google
>> 2. hover over the link in a result; you see a normal link
>> 3. right-click to get the link's context menu
>> 4. hover over the link again
>>
>> In step (2) you see the link on its own; in step (4) you see the
>> version with the tracking redirect added.
>
> Yes; but even if I simply click the link at step (2), I see (via the
> status overlay) that it actually sends me via a Google tracking URL
> instead of directly to the destination. I remember noticing (and
> disapproving) when this behavior was first introduced to their search
> results.
>
> At that point, of course, it's too late to decide I didn't want Google
> to know that I clicked that link -- but in the process, I've learned
> something: that Google search results are not simply links for my
> browser to follow, but "booby-traps" that will report back to Google
> before taking me to the target page. And if I don't like that, I might
> decide to look for a different search engine, or to be more careful what
> I do with results in future.
>
> Replacing the redirects with <a ping> will completely hide this from me;
> in that case, I might never have noticed that clicking those links was
> anything more than a simple "go to this page".
>
> Maybe that's OK, but I do think this changes things in a significant
> way, and we should give some priority to addressing the concerns. Maybe
> the send-ping preference should be exposed at a similar level to Do Not
> Track?
>
> For comparison, I really like the fact that when an email comes with
> return receipt request, Thunderbird will ask me something like "the
> sender asked to be notified when you open this message..." and let me
> choose whether or not to respond. While I guess <a ping> will probably
> become so widespread that I wouldn't want to be prompted every time
> ("Google asked to be notified when you click this link..."), some kind
> of user notification and UI to opt in/out of tracking does seem needed here.
>
> JK
>
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