Currently, using the “Share a link” or copying the URL associated with a post’s timestamp results in a URL that contains the username of whoever does the copying, if that person happened to be logged in at the time. This poses some privacy concern: If the link gets shared around, possibly forwarded multiple times, it exposes who was the original person to create it – like a watermark. While it is possible to just remove the u=..., this is easily forgotten when just copy-pasting URLs around. After all, users do not typically expect a URL to leak information like this. I also tried hard to come up with a good reason for why the username is in the link, and failed – I suppose there is a reason, but I wonder if it is worth the cost?
So, please remove the u=... at the end of posts’ URLs.
Including the username is a feature that allows Discourse to track who has shared a link. One can easily copy the URL from the web browser. If you want to disable this feature see the discussion @vinothkannans linked to.
I love the feature because it enables us to track the top referrers, who we do appreciate with gifts and freebies. It’s one of the ways we grow our community.
Then rather than clicking the icon, type control-L then control-c. If you really want to use the mouse, then you can click the location bar in your browser, and probably right-click and select “copy”.
Being able to give users credit for bringing new users to a community is literally a valuable benefit in the eyes of many community managers.
I usually want to link to a particular post. When I see three posts on the screen, I do not know which one the link goes to.
I see. I personally don’t agree, but at least this explains why the name is added to the link. I still think it’s a very problematic default, but I realize that this kind of community building has higher priority here than privacy concerns.
I don’t follow. It’s not about leaking the fact that a user with that name exists on that forum – that’s indeed public information. It’s about the fact that this user is the one who originally shared this link. That’s definitely not public information.
For me, the ?u=mittineague can easily be removed with an edit - if I wanted to not have it for a post I was referring to, and alternatively it could be removed by script - if I wanted to not have it for any posts referred to by anyone.
Personally, if I care enough to refer to a post, I really don’t care if others know that it was me that referred to it. That is, I don’t understand how this could be a source of a “privacy” problem. Please post an example of how this can be a problem.
I think that the logic is that If they shared the link publicly, e.g, on twitter, then it’d be public that they’d shared it anyway. But your logic is different.
Well this would first of all leak a connection between maybe otherwise uncorrelated usernames. I may not want to reveal who I am on that forum as I pass on links to a different group of people. I wouldn’t expect that to be revealed.
Also, the name sticks around as the link gets copy-pasted into more places, still pointing to who originally started the reference.
Technically savvy people will easily recognize that their username is in the URL and just remove it, but I wouldn’t expect non-technical people to know that they can modify a URL like that and still have it point to the same thing.
I tried this in another forum where I am admin, and it does not work. When I click on a post’s time and copy what I get, it still adds ?u=... to the URL.
That script will remove the username from “share a link to this post” button only. Not in the time link. If you like to remove that then you have to add some extra modifications.
Potrebbe esserci una funzionalità di preferenze utente per disabilitare il tracciamento del nome utente per gli utenti che non lo desiderano? Non voglio il mio nome utente nei link dei miei timestamp. Posso modificare manualmente l’URL, ma è fastidioso e soggetto a errori.
Penso che un esempio di caso d’uso sarebbe un forum in cui non ti dispiace che le persone sappiano che l’hai letto in generale, ma in cui non vuoi che le persone ti colleghino ai tuoi post effettivi (ad esempio, un forum di consigli sessuali o uno sulla salute mentale).
Penso sia possibile creare un piccolo componente tematico per sovrascrivere questa funzione. Per tua informazione, rimuoverà il nome utente dall’URL se disabiliti i badge nelle impostazioni del sito.
Sarebbe bello poter garantire che ogni utente abbia un codice di riferimento diverso invece del proprio nickname. Intendo, ad esempio, che il mio nickname è bigluke97 ma il mio link di riferimento è hrt72skd0. In modo che il mio link di riferimento sia ad esempio: ?u=hrt72skd0 e il sistema saprà che ero io (bigluke97), in modo che solo i membri dello staff sappiano a chi è collegato un codice di riferimento specifico, ma non gli altri utenti. Non lo rende completamente anonimo, ma almeno non mostra direttamente il nome utente che è molto più pubblico.
Onestamente non vedo alcun problema nell’avere il nome utente come codice nel link, ma sarebbe comunque un’idea molto gradita focalizzata sulla privacy, secondo me.
I link di riferimento anonimizzati suggeriti da @yhh9xdq7d non fornirebbero la maggior parte o tutti i vantaggi in termini di privacy senza rimuovere la funzionalità (tracciamento dei referral)? C’è un motivo per cui un’impostazione del sito per disabilitare completamente i link di riferimento sarebbe più desiderabile?
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