1865853 - "Copy Clean Link" doesn't work on Google Images

Status: NEW

(Core :: Privacy: Anti-Tracking, enhancement, P3)

Description

[08xjcec48]

Attachment: Copy Link Without Site Tracking.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0

Steps to reproduce:

• Go to https://www.google.com/search?q=test&gbv=2&tbm=isch
• Click on an image
• Right-click on the image link and use the Copy Link Without Site Tracking option

Actual results:

Google uses a script to convert it to a tracking link with many parameters: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpaperandinkprinting.com%2Fproduct%2Ftest-product%2F&psig=XXX&ust=000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=000&ved=XXX_XXX.

Expected results:

Since the new context menu option says Copy Link Without Site Tracking, I expected Firefox to give me the original direct link.

Comment 1

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

This is another case of a URL nested inside the query params. Here is what we could do:

1. Iterate over all query params of the outer url
2. if a query param is a URI call the algorithm recursively with that URI and insert the result back as a query param. This may require decoding and encoding url components.
3. if a query param is on the list, strip it
4. if the query param is not on the list ignore it.

The alternative would be to "debounce", that is to directly copy the destination url in the clipboard rather than going through the bounce hop. While it brings privacy benefits (against navigational tracking), I would not do this generally since it may cause breakage for sites that rely on the bounce for functionality.

Comment 2

[Jon]

It's worth noting that this happens on regular Google web results too, not just images.
For example searching for "Firefox" on Google, then right click > Copy Link Without Site Tracking on the link to the Firefox download page produces the following link:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Comment 3

[08xjcec48]

Please change the status to New.