All Google Link Tracking busters no longer work

[kekkc]

Hi,

seems that all Google Link Tracking busters that rely on a general technique to suppress the click are no longer working.

Steps to reproduce:

1. disable uBlock or any other addons that might interfere
2. do a google search https://www.google.com/search?as_q=asdf.com&gl=us&hl=en&num=50&safe=off&newwindow=1
3. open browser console (in FF you have to enable "browser requests"), clear all messages in the console
4. click on the first google result

Console shows that google is called first:

uBlock is disabling it, because they are removing the google specific attribute (cheating ;)).

Personally, I'm also using the mutationObserver approach to suppress click on any links, which also discontinued to work (if it's a real link, with a real https:// target noone should be interested if I clicked it or not and I expect nothing else than that this real target is opened in a new tab):

const linkBuster = (e) => {
	aLink.onclick = aLink.onmousedown = aLink.onmouseup = null;
	e?.stopPropagation();
	e?.stopImmediatePropagation();
};
linkBuster;
['click', 'mousedown', 'mouseup'].forEach((event) => aLink.addEventListener(event, linkBuster, { capture: true, passive: true })); 

Would be awesome if someone has an idea here, how to REALLY suppress the click for google, even if they use 5 eventlisteners on click (also posted here: stacybrock/google-tracking-b-gone#8).

[HGP23]

Any updates on this? Is this still happening with respect to the Firefox or Chrome extension?

I just came across this package and was contemplating on installing extension, but a futile effort if this is now broken on Chrome

[Rob--W]

The primary goal of this extension is to make remove the link mangling behavior that Google often has. I am reminded that this is still relevant whenever I come across a presentation that has a https://www.google.com/url redirector embedded into it.

I use multiple techniques to make sure that the links point to their expected destination.

There are many ways in which Google can track your interaction with the page. If you are very concerned with the extra tracking and network requests, your most effective solution is to not use Google, or to completely disable JavaScript on it. The latter would also significantly degrade the experience of Google, but if you are happy with just a simple search box without autocompletion, then it would work. In combination with my extension, the links would be without the Google redirector and there won't be tracking of outgoing link interactions, only search queries themselves would (inevitably) be sent to Google.

[kekkc]

If the link source cannot be adjusted, Google is falling back to using Link PINGs. This should be disabled by default in FF: browser.send_pings = false, but it's not working here.

uBlock as well as https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ping-blocker-addon/ will block Link PINGs. Together with Robs "dont-track-me-google" it'll block all Google Link Tracking reliably currently.

EDIT: there's a dedicated setting beacon.enabled. If this is switched to false Google will again fall back to using GET Requests for tracking, without adjusting the link source. Guess it's currently best to use uBlock or ping-blocker-addon to just block Link PINGs completely (and not to disable them completely) & dont-track-me-google.

[kekkc]

Alternatively, the following can be added to dont-track-me-google (no add. extensions needed & GLT Blocking fully functional):

const unsafeWindow = window.wrappedJSObject || unsafeWindow;
unsafeWindow.navigator.sendBeacon = new window.Function('return false');