this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Does anyone know where the source code for this is?
My c++ is pretty rusty, but I hopped through the changelogs. I think this is the source for it here https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/toolkit/components/antitracking/URLQueryStringStripper.cpp
tbf, out of all the programming languages c++ is the worst in terms of DX and readability. Even worse than java, which I despised so much
I don't know the relevant programming languages so I don't know what to search for, but generally, if you want to find something in the Firefox source code, supposedly https://searchfox.org is a great way to do that.
There's various well-known tracking parameters that can be stripped, like UTM parameters. Stripping all query parameters would break a lot of sites, like anything in the vein of http://example.com/site.php?id=123
Blanket-removing the query string would break many real links, so I'd imagine it's more nuanced than that.
I really hope they're not sending the URL anywhere..
I don't see why they should send the URL somewhere. For Googley reasons, most tracking parameters start with "utm_". You can remove those pretty naΓ―vely, generally without links breaking.