When Sharing Isn't Caring: A Guide to Tracking Links

As a content creator, I understand the value of analytics. It's crucial for me to understand what content did well and why or if my website views are decreasing. As a privacy advocate, it's also important to me to keep those analytics reasonable.

Unfortunately, most companies feel that there's no such thing as too much data in their quest to understand, predict, and nudge our behavior to their benefit. To this end, they often take every opportunity they can to sneak in just a little bit more surveillance. And thus, this week, I'd like to introduce the "tracking link" to those who've never heard of it: what it is, how it threatens the privacy of you and your loved ones, and how to easily avoid it.