Privacy

32506 readers

1138 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

430

Google docs infects html exports with google tracking redirects. (fosstodon.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

@Joe_[email protected] wrote:

Today I found out that google docs infects html exports with spyware, no scripts, but links in your document are replaced with invisible google tracking redirects. I was using their software because a friend wanted me to work with him on a google doc, he is a pretty big fan of their software, but we were both somehow absolutely shocked that they would go that far.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have a Google Doc that's a statblock for an RPG. It has a link to the mage armor spell, which goes directly to https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/mage-armor/.

I just downloaded that statblock as an html. Then I opened that html file. The statblock is there and it all looks pretty much the same.

But then I hover over the mage armor link and it instead goes to https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/mage-armor/&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1696552528610887&usg=AOvVaw1Wgq9wmajthwTbYmk1EmHx.

This page immediately redirects to the proper destination in a fraction of a second. Blink and you'll miss it. However, it does allow Google to track that I clicked the link, and probably associate it back to me and/or the original document.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Thanks. Got it. Could a pihole potentially block this?

Edit: nvm then you just simply couldn't open the links.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Afaik there are browser extensions that find and replace these kinds of tracking links with the original ones.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Oh, right. Like clearURL and certain ublock origin lists?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It's probably easy enough to write a script that will go through the generated HTML and just scrub out the Google.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So if there's only a few links, you could manually replace them?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yes. You could probably also write a simple script that scrubs the Googles out.