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Option to unwrap tracking URLs #5591
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I think attempting something like this will end up being a cat-and-mouse game. They will change the format, AntennaPod will break, we push an update, they change the format again. I would rather not try to start modifying the download URLs. By the way, AntennaPod automatically clears the cookies every time you launch the app, so there is not too much information that could be collected. |
Yes, ensuring your own and your user's privacy is always a cat-and-mouse game. Trackers are relentless. But it might be worth it. Fortunately if a tracker does change their URL pattern -- which doesn't generally happen in practice -- AntennaPod wouldn't really "break", it's just that the anti-tracking feature will allow a tracker (but there should be no stated guarantee that the feature will block all trackers anyway since that's unreasonable). The feature seems pretty simple and could be built flexibly to make it easy to add new trackers. That said, I find your argument reasonable to consider something like this out-of-scope for the project. Feel free to close wontfix. |
Allowing the user to specify custom cookies could help as well. For example, to opt out of Nielsen tracking per https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices |
That sounds like a lot of (implementation & maintenance) work for the little gain (given that cookies get wiped every app launch). Time that goes away from adding/improving core features, so I wouldn't be in favour of implementing that :) |
It doesn't need to go that way:
There is a third pretty basic option that could be considered either in conjunction to the above, or in isolation, and that would be to let the user edit the podcast URL from inside AntennaPod -- this way the tracking can be removed manually. BTW:
PS: a very rough draft of how the filtering could work:
Of course the values for populating You'd have a iteration 0: Probably not the most elegant approach but it could work and retain a modicum of flexibility. |
The IP changes regularly and AntennaPod does not provide other data. The user agent string is simply "Antennapod/2.5.0" - not as verbose as the ones on desktop browsers. |
@ByteHamster How about just some simple regex matching for whitelist sanitation instead of blacklist? |
Checklist
App version
2.4.0
Where did you get the app from
F-Droid
Problem you may be having, or feature you want
The EasyPrivacy list matches some common trackers used by podcasts. If a system or network gateway is subscribed to this list to block traffic, downloading podcasts in AntennaPod fails with a generic "IO Error".
Suggested solution
AntennaPod could have an optional feature to unwrap tracking URLs. Not only would this allow downloading podcasts on privacy-concerned networks to work at all, but also any user who is interested in not being tracked could turn it on and get some extra privacy.
Personally I'd like to see this as a default-on feature, but opt-in would be better than nothing.
Screenshots / Drawings / Technical details
This is how the URL unwrapping could work. Note: sometimes the tracking URLs are nested, so the URL unwrapper should be recursive. Example:
https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/XXX/traffic.megaphone.fm/CRMD83478344359?updated=1639156001
After unwrapping podtrac.com the URL becomes:
https://pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/XXX/traffic.megaphone.fm/CRMD83478344359?updated=1639156001
After unwrapping pdst.fm the URL becomes (note: XXX is a placeholder for a tracking identifier):
https://chtbl.com/track/XXX/traffic.megaphone.fm/CRMD83478344359?updated=1639156001
Finally, after unwrapping chtbl.com the URL becomes:
https://traffic.megaphone.fm/CRMD83478344359?updated=1639156001
URLs could be nested in any order, so the unwrapper could just keep unwrapping until the URL fails to match something that the unwrapper knows how to unwrap.
As of today, only pdst.fm and chtbl.com are in the EasyPrivacy list, but www.podtrac.com could be added in the future. It would be a good idea to add support for unwrapping all three of these trackers (plus any others that anyone else is aware of).
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