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Comment by cptskippy | Hacker News Reader

> whenever I click a link on Gmail that goes to Github, Github opens in the Google container

Google intercepts clicks and redirects them through a Google Domain to track clickthru. If you're in Gmail and hover over a link it will show the actual destination but onclick your browser opens a mail.google.com URL that redirects to the destination URL.

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This extension removes the URL intercept/redirect on Gmail and many other sites:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/skip-redirect...

This one handles the other situation, tracking parameters added to the URL that are intentionally passed to the target site:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/

Thanks for the link. I just spent a few minutes looking at this extention’s creator’s github activity. Installing this will be my first todo list activity whenever I first use my laptop today.

That redirect always bugged me.

EDIT: I just noticed on the install page "This is not a Recommended Extension. Make sure you trust it before installing.Learn more" which is annoying.

ClearURLs by Kevin R. is recommended by Mozilla, so maybe that's a better option:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/

This is the real problem in my opinion. The URL shown in the status bar should always match the URL which is opened after clicking on the link. Anything else is deception.

I don't know how you'd enforce it at the browser level because obviously there are tons of legit uses for modifying a link on click... but it should be enforced somehow.

What are legit uses for modifying a link on click? I've only seen that used for tracking.

The classic use is after a site redesign or migration to a new domain, due to organizational name change, or whatever. You don't want to break all of the incoming links that are out there, but you want people to get to the page they were trying to reach.

That's handled by redirects with HTTP 301 messages, not JavaScript hijacking links on the referrer page, which is what Google search pages do.

I might have badly expressed myself - I'm specifically talking about changing the link target in the link's onclick handler like Google does, such that the link target shown in the browser is different from the actual target.

It doesn't matter though, the tracking domain would run in the container and github outside it.

I don't want google to know that I clicked on the link. That is sensitive.

Switch to an email provider that doesn't want to track you. You can be on Fastmail in an hour if you have your own domain.

I have used fastmail for ~10 years. However google still has far too many ways to track me.

Why are you worried about GMail's outgoing links if you're using Fastmail?

Gmail is not the only place where outgoing links get this treatment. Random websites do it too once in a while.

protonmail did the oddest thing to me the other day. It sent an email to my gmail account to inform me that I had received an email at my protonmail address. I was stunned. The main point of having the protonmail account was to keep google out of my business.

Now I have to find a provider that doesn't leak in the dumbest of ways.

In protonmail, Settings → Daily email notifications → Disabled. No, I don't understand why that isn't the default setting either.

Yes. The email protonmail sent to my gmail account informed me of this lovely default. One email too late.

Use a mail client like Thunderbird.

The browser have to intercept 302 redirects and javascript .location assignments, open safe locations in a different container. Would that be a new window or the same window but with container change?

In the former scenario you'd basically get 2 new tabs, in the later you'd have a tab represent two different containers based on where you navigate in history.

Either way it sounds unsavory.

Firefox already does what you describe. It's a new tab.

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