Major Browsers to Prevent Disabling of Click Tracking Privacy Risk

[CyberTech]

Content source

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/major-browsers-to-prevent-disabling-of-click-tracking-privacy-risk/

A HTML standard called hyperlink auditing that allows sites to track link clicks is enabled by default on Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Microsoft Edge, but will soon have no way to disable it. As it is considered a privacy risk, browsers previously allowed you to disable this feature. Now they are going in the opposite direction.

Hyperlink auditing is a HTML standard that allows the creation of special links that ping back to a specified URL when they are clicked on. These pings are done in the form of a POST request to the specified web page that can then examine the request headers to see what page the link was clicked on.

Ping HTML Link

This will render on the page as a normal link to google.com and if you hover over it, will only show you the destination URL. It does not show you the ping back URL of https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/pong.php, so users will not even realize this is happening unless they examine the sites source code.

More information

Major Browsers to Prevent Disabling of Click Tracking Privacy Risk

Newer versions of Chrome, Safari, and Opera will no longer allow you to disable hyperlink auditing, which is a concern for those seeking maximum privacy. While some of these browsers previously allowed you to disable this feature, newer versions are going in the opposite direction.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

More information

Major Browsers to Prevent Disabling of Click Tracking Privacy Risk

Newer versions of Chrome, Safari, and Opera will no longer allow you to disable hyperlink auditing, which is a concern for those seeking maximum privacy. While some of these browsers previously allowed you to disable this feature, newer versions are going in the opposite direction.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

uBlock Origin can block this:
gorhill/uBlock
Don't know if that will change with new browser versions...

 

[pcuser88]

The latest version of Privacy Manager for Chrome allows users to enable or disable it.

 

[silversurfer]

Mozilla Firefox to Enable Hyperlink Ping Tracking By Default

Mozilla has told BleepingComputer that they will be enabling the tracking feature called hyperlink auditing, or Pings, by default in Firefox. There is no timeline for when this feature will be enabled, but it will be done when their implementation is complete.

After Mozilla's response, we also contacted Brave Software to ask if they had any plans to enable hyperlink auditing in their browser.
"Disabling hyperlink auditing is a crucial privacy feature, and Brave has always disabled this by default," Catherine Corre, Head of Communications at Brave Software, told BleepingComputer via email. "Brave users expect this protection from our browser."