
Stop adding email tracking links to phone numbers - edent
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/stop-adding-email-tracking-links-to-phone-numbers/
======
laurent123456
Clickbait title that implies that tracking links are commonly added to phone
numbers, while there's probably just that one bug he noticed.

------
hedora
From one of the comments, this FF add on rewrites links to remove tracking
parameters:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/remove-
fbclid...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/remove-fbclid-and-
utm/)

Too bad ssl makes it hard to this at the router level (similarly to Pi Hole,
but for HTTPS, not DNS).

~~~
untog
There's this addon as well that Firefox marks as "recommended", for whatever
reassurance that may give you:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
GB/firefox/addon/clearurls/?sr...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
GB/firefox/addon/clearurls/?src=featured)

"Recommended extensions are curated extensions that meet the highest standards
of security, functionality, and user experience. Firefox staff thoroughly
evaluate each extension before it receives Recommended status."

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-
extensions-...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-
program)

(presumably any extension like this has access to every URL you visit, which
is enough to give me pause)

~~~
solarkraft
It requires all kinds of weird permissions, which also gives me pause. I'll
trust it because it's recommended, but ... why does it want access to all data
on every website?

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
How else would it rewrite links on every website?

~~~
Y_Y
It just has to modify the links you follow. You could get most of the way with
a regex in the URL bar.

~~~
chipsa
I'm not sure about FF internals, but if you want to stop the tracker bits from
being sent, doing in the URL bar might be after the link gets sent to the
server, in which case they still get the tracking info.

So you need to rewrite it before it gets clicked.

------
JohnFen
Tracking links are why I never just click on links anymore. I copy/paste them
so I can edit out the spying nonsense.

~~~
cuspycode
I copy and edit, and then paste into a different private browser instance.

~~~
fsflover
And I open them in a disposable virtual machine on Qubes OS :)

------
mikesabat
For use cases where one wants to track calls, length or connection, the better
way to do this is the click-to-call approach.

Have a button that says, "Call Me". If you have the user's number place a call
to them and connect it to the destination number. If you don't have the user's
number then collect it before placing the call.

There are much better tracking benefits and data collection for phone numbers.

If one is doing marketing and wants a person to call, there usually isn't much
of a difference in conversion rate between a call to action like "Call
800-555-1212" and a form that will call you.

Source: An employer powered a metric shit-ton of advocacy call campaigns -
like the STOP SOPA & PIPA stuff that took over the internet a few years ago.

------
duxup
Is this common? Or is this a bunch of folks "doing it wrong" and not really
getting anything out of it anyway?

~~~
W4ldi
It's most likely a bug. Some dev added tracking to all the href's and just
didn't think about phone numbers. The title of the article sounds like they
did it on purpose, which i doubt.

~~~
citrin_ru
I'd argue that it is not a bug - it is a wrong assumption (that all URLs are
http/https) based on limited experience.

With a typical bug code works not as author intended it to work. Numbers of
such bugs can be reduced by testing and better tooling. But software
development as an industry creates incentive to be overconfident and not to
question own assumptions: developers who don't stop to read
documentation/standards/gather information in anther way deliver more features
in less time.

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saagarjha
> So, if you're writing link tracking software, please make sure only to add
> parameter to URls where it makes sense.

Also take a moment to consider if you to track what links people are clicking
on at all.

~~~
duxup
Internally at least I like to know how the web apps I write are being used.

Like if the first thing everyone does is open their "messages" ... maybe give
them an option to just do that automatically.

Send that info to a third party ... no I'm not down with that.

~~~
superkuh
So just look at the logs? Why is tracking link crap required?

~~~
duxup
I'm not sure it is "required".... depending on what you're talking about.

I was speaking more generally about what folks think of as "tracking" being a
really wide topic that can involve totally innocuous "tracking" that is
actually to their benefit, and far worse that is more of a dark pattern.

~~~
JohnFen
True. But tracking is so common and so widely abused that I think it's
entirely reasonable to take the stance of blocking it all anyway.

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bathtub365
Is there another example of a company doing this? The title seems to imply
that this is a widespread problem.

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kaizendad
As a marketer in a former life, I can't understand why somebody would do this.
It's very cheap to get a separate phone number for each inbound channel and
there's tons of software that will track which channels are working for you,
starting at the low end with an intern and Excel.

~~~
skrebbel
It's just a bug. Somebody made a script that appends tracking codes to every
<a href=".."> in the document.

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soared
For non-marketers here: you aren’t supposed to use utms for internal links
anyways. Doing so will break your analytics and there are ways to track
button/link clicks without utms.

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egdod
Maybe just stop adding tracking links altogether.

~~~
zelphirkalt
Damn, you were faster. I was gonna write: "I can shorten the title: Stop
tracking."

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maerF0x0
shhh.. if they figure it out they'll start to provision single use numbers (or
LRU style churning) to track specific behaviors.

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notwedtm
I would argue that it's your phone that is in the wrong. The dialer should
know that a `?` is not a valid DTMF tone, and strip all invalid characters.

There are plenty of use-cases where having tracking metadata is useful. I
can't think of a single one where having a dialer interpret a `?` is.

~~~
hedora
As the article says, the standard for tel: urls specifically forbids the
behavior you’re describing.

