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The article isn't wrong, by forcing scroll to a certain location and embedding for example images that only load when scrolled into view the web server can know that someone was linked to a particular section of the website with the new deep-linking feature.

This is especially the case if the browser scrolls and doesn't load all prior resources automatically because they were never "in view".

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You can already measure where the visitor's view is and notice the sections at which the visitor stares the most.

The scenario you've given is also very similar to a scenario in which the user opens the web page and then manually searches for "cancer". Or scrolls down rapidly until they notice the word "cancer" and then stops. I do that all the time for example.

So I don't see how excluding such a feature protects the user in any way compared with the status quo.

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