Reddit starts tracking our clicks

https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/49jjb7/reddit_change_click_events_on_outbound_links/

created by Vozzel on 17/03/2016 at 16:54 UTC

289 upvotes, 14 top-level comments (showing 14)

Comments

Comment by ourari at 17/03/2016 at 18:48 UTC

23 upvotes, 3 direct replies

Back when they announced it they said they will not track right click > open in new tab. If you feel you need one, that's your work-around.

https://np.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/49jjb7/reddit_change_click_events_on_outbound_links/d0sqnmj

Comment by [deleted] at 18/03/2016 at 03:06 UTC*

28 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Well, looks like it's time to make a tracker submission to ghostery and some of the other privacy lists. This is exactly the same sort of shit Facebook and Google pull with their embedded like/+1 buttons and it's just as bullshit that reddit is doing it.

Until then, the following userscript disables this (credit to /u/OperaSona, original post here[1]):

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/4aqdg0/reddit_started_tracking_the_links_we_click_heres/

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Don't track my clicks, reddit
// @namespace    http://reddit.com/u/OperaSona
// @author       OperaSona
// @match        *://*.reddit.com/*
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

var a_col = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
var a, actual_fucking_url;
for(var i = 0; i < a_col.length; i++) {
  a = a_col[i];
  actual_fucking_url = a.getAttribute('data-href-url');
  if(actual_fucking_url) a.setAttribute('data-outbound-url', actual_fucking_url);
}

Additionally you should block:

events.redditmedia.com
out.reddit.com

in your hosts file or adblocker.

If using ABP, uBlock, or uBlock Origin the exact syntax to add to your filters is:

||events.redditmedia.com^
||out.reddit.com^

Edit: I can find no evidence that they are doing this at the moment, at least for my account, but they said they were rolling it out slowly so it's completely possible only certain users are affected for now.

Edit 2: looking at ublock Origin's log, blocking events.redditmedia.com prevents their attempts at implementing pixel tracking. You probably don't want pixel tracking.

Comment by ProGamerGov at 17/03/2016 at 20:53 UTC

18 upvotes, 3 direct replies

How do I disable this? I hate this stupid out.reddit shit.

Comment by desi_fubu at 17/03/2016 at 18:54 UTC

5 upvotes, 1 direct replies

does clicking on a link constitute as a vote in a weird way?

Comment by [deleted] at 17/03/2016 at 19:25 UTC*

11 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by [deleted] at 17/03/2016 at 21:22 UTC*

7 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[removed]