ClearURLs

ClearURLs is an add-on based on the new WebExtensions technology and is optimized for Firefox and Chrome based browsers.

This add-on will remove the tracking fields from all URLs, which are visited by the browser, with the help of an external rule file, which is regularly updated by us and can be found here, to protect your privacy.

Application

Large (and small) websites use elements in the URL, e.g.: https://example.com?utm_source=newsletter1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sale to track your online activities. In this example, the utm fields used to track a custom campaign, managed by Google. It tells the provider, and also Google, the source, the medium (e.g. email or web) and the specific campaign of the link. All these tracking fields are not necessary for a website to be displayed or work correctly and can therefore be removed - that is exactly what ClearURLs does, so you can think of it as an URL clean maid.

Another common example are Amazon URLs. If you search for a product on Amazon you will get a very long URL for this product, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/exampleProduct/ref=sxin_0_pb?__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&keywords=tea&pd_rd_i=exampleProduct&pd_rd_r=8d39e4cd-1e4f-43db-b6e7-72e969a84aa5&pd_rd_w=1pcKM&pd_rd_wg=hYrNl&pf_rd_p=50bbfd25-5ef7-41a2-68d6-74d854b30e30&pf_rd_r=0GMWD0YYKA7XFGX55ADP&qid=1517757263&rnid=2914120011, the most of this URL is available for tracking and is not needed. After ClearURLs has cleaned this URL, it looks like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/exampleProduct

Screenshot

CI/CD Artifacts Download (for Firefox- and Chrome-Dev only)

Here you can download the packed files for the Firefox- and Chrome-Dev:

Firefox

Chrome

Test

If you want to test whether ClearURLs works correctly on your system, you can go to this test page: https://clearurls.roebert.eu/

Contribute

If you have any suggestions or complaints, please create an issue.

Translate ClearURLs

You want to help translating ClearURLs into many languages? – Nice

You can choose between two options to contribute. You can create a merge request, or you can use the POEditor to translate ClearURLs.

Hint: The description field in the translation files are only an information for what the translation is used. It is not necessary to translate the description field; in the most cases it is empty.

Merge request

If you want to create a merge request, you must open the path _locales/en/messages.json in the ClearURLs repo and translate the english terms into terms of your language. Once you have translated all the terms, you make a pull request of your translation. Please push your translation into the folder _locales/{country code}/messages.json.

POEditor

Projects that use parts of ClearURLs

• Uroute used ClearURLs to filter/clean URL before launching browser

Recommended by...

• ghacks-user.js
• Awesome Humane Tech List

Permissions

Reasoning for needed permissions you can find under this discussion.

Copyright

We use some third-party scripts in our add-on. The authors and licenses are listed below.

• WebExtension browser API Polyfill | Copyright by Mozilla | MPL-2.0
• Bootstrap v3.3.7 | Copyright 2011-2016 Twitter, Inc. | MIT
• jQuery v3.2.1 | Copyright 2017 The jQuery Foundation | MIT
• sha256.jquery.plugin | Copyright 2003, Christoph Bichlmeier | MIT | GPLv2
• DataTables | Copyright 2011-2015 SpryMedia Ltd | MIT
• Pick-a-Color v1.2.3 | Copyright (c) 2013 Lauren Sperber and Broadstreet Ads | MIT
• ip-range-check v0.2.0 | Copyright (c) 2018 Daniel Compton | MIT