Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
#2i don't see any variables in the url when i run the inspector.
Re: Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
#3I actually like this. Assuming you agree there are non-creepy reasons to track clicks (not a given on HN) then this lets you keep your urls nice and clean when people just want to copy and paste them.
I imagine it might break in some scenarios (the url ends up with junk in it from bad unicode conversion) but it's up to you to be permissive in the urls you accept.
Re: Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
#4i don't see any variables in the url when i run the inspector.
There aren't any variables, just a couple unicode characters after the word 'inspector'
And this post doesn't link to the actual tracked url, the page contains it.
This is the actual URL: http://kaspars.net/blog/web-development/invisible-click-trac...
Re: Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
#5i don't see any variables in the url when i run the inspector.
Have a look at the request URL in this screenshot: http://kaspars.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/invisible-clic... Notice the escaped character there.
Re: Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
#6Does this also work in mail readers?
Re: Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
#7i don't see any variables in the url when i run the inspector.
I do.
Re: Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
#8Does this also work in mail readers?
Not sure, haven't tested it.
Re: Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
#9Nitpick:
> The idea is to use zero-width and space characters of UTF-8 such as U+200B, U+200C, U+200D
That must be Unicode, not UTF-8.
Re: Invisible Click Tracking Using “Empty” UTF-8 Characters
#10Anyone have a suggestion of how this would be used in practice for uniquely identifying something?
So there are a certain number of non-width space characters. As far as I can find in the links in the OP, U+FEFF, U+180E, U+200B, U+200C, U+200D would make 5.
So we have at least 5 values to work with, which would make... 120 combinations if they're ordered differently? Surely we would need more if we want to uniquely identify something such as a referral, or are there more non-width spaces?
I'm kind of dumb and bad at probability, also. You're encouraged to correct my thoughts on this and show me the errors of my thinking.