Reddit will soon start logging which outbound links a user clicks on

http://np.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/49jjb7/reddit_change_click_events_on_outbound_links/

created by Pastries on 08/03/2016 at 20:15 UTC

422 upvotes, 9 top-level comments (showing 9)

Comments

Comment by [deleted] at 09/03/2016 at 00:16 UTC

36 upvotes, 3 direct replies

1. How is this technically accomplished - via scripts, cookies?

2. Can this behavior be blocked? Could the tracking domain "out.reddit.com" simply be blocked?

3. Does this tracking only occur when a user is logged into a reddit account?

Comment by [deleted] at 08/03/2016 at 21:14 UTC*

106 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by [deleted] at 09/03/2016 at 04:37 UTC

50 upvotes, 4 direct replies

[removed]

Comment by JDGumby at 08/03/2016 at 20:40 UTC

48 upvotes, 2 direct replies

I guess it's time to get used to right-clicking links to copy them - and then probably edit them to get rid of the Reddit tracking crap, if they alter the URL like Google does for its top results. :/

Comment by RunRunDie at 09/03/2016 at 02:25 UTC

13 upvotes, 1 direct replies

You should be using changing your Reddit account periodically. Karma is nice but your continued anonymity is even better.

Comment by [deleted] at 09/03/2016 at 12:41 UTC

3 upvotes, 1 direct replies

See if they just used `a[ping]` I'd have no problem with that since it's a real standard and importantly,can be disabled by the end user.

Comment by ZombieRonSwanson at 09/03/2016 at 06:44 UTC

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

would this still be logged if say you only open links by right clicking on them and opening them in either a new tab or incognito?

Comment by Alice_n_Bob at 09/03/2016 at 06:57 UTC*

2 upvotes, 1 direct replies

There's a plugin for Firefox that breaks this tweak, I can't recall the name... Foxgloves or something. Let me dig it up

[EDIT] No not firegloves. That impedes fingerprint based tracking. What you want is Clean Links, plugin for FF and chrome

Comment by sathoro at 09/03/2016 at 04:16 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Their server logs already know which pages you are looking at, and the links that are available on those pages. So I don't think it is that much of a privacy concern to track exactly what link you actually click on. If you want that level of anonymity you should browse while not logged in and through a VPN or Tor because with or without this feature they could already guess to some extent whether you have clicked a link or not such as by you having voted on the submission, viewed the comments, etc.