Investigate how Safari in iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma will impact URLs generated in Wikimedia sites
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	kostajh
	Jun 9 2023, 9:50 AM

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From https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/08/ios-17-link-tracking-protection/:

Link Tracking Protection is a new feature automatically activated in Mail, Messages, and Safari in Private Browsing mode. It detects user-identifiable tracking parameters in link URLs, and automatically removes them.

For GrowthExperiments suggested edits feature, that means presumably the existing URL for a task card on Special:Homepage would change from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Homepage/newcomertask/45279434?geclickid=fnjf57l4o2tf2j20a2bmfgc4edlhr15i&genewcomertasktoken=v1mk7a0n5jdpuufotm90r1mipgqfta2n&gesuggestededit=1&getasktype=copyedit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Homepage/newcomertask/45279434?gesuggestededit=1&getasktype=copyedit

Which would mean we couldn't track clicks from Special:Homepage to a suggested edits task.

For now, this seems like we don't need to do more research as the change is limited to Safari in private browsing mode, but if Safari adopts this for regular browsing mode, we'd need rethink how we're using query parameters for analytics purposes.

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Mentioned In: T437243: Ensure all tasks tagged with #growth-team also have a valid component tag

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kostajh created this task.Jun 9 2023, 9:50 AM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptJun 9 2023, 9:50 AM

I saw a news article today which explained how to turn the link tracking prevention on outside of private browsing, so it'll probably be more common, albeit still not the default... yet.

TheDJ subscribed.Jun 27 2023, 9:11 AM

I'm really curious how this will pan out, because the difference between a tracking id and an invite id seems completely 0 to me, so this has the potential to break lots of flows in all kinds of software and yet can easily be worked around by making an id part of the main url, so....

(Adding Data-Engineering project tag for re-triage, as Analytics-Radar is an inactive project tag after Analytics got archived)

JArguello-WMF moved this task from Incoming (new tickets) to Tag with Radar on the Data-Engineering board.Jun 29 2023, 11:52 PM

Urbanecm_WMF moved this task from Inbox to Triaged on the Growth-Team board.Oct 17 2023, 12:45 PM

• lbowmaker moved this task from Tag with Radar to Tag with Icebox on the Data-Engineering board.Nov 10 2023, 1:23 PM

• VirginiaPoundstone edited projects, added: Data-Engineering-Icebox-DEPRECATED; removed: Data-Engineering.Jan 6 2025, 9:17 PM

Ottomata edited projects, added: Data-Engineering, Data-Engineering-Icebox; removed: Data-Engineering-Icebox-DEPRECATED.Jan 10 2025, 2:37 AM

Urbanecm_WMF mentioned this in T437243: Ensure all tasks tagged with #growth-team also have a valid component tag.Sep 7 2026, 4:50 PM

Declining. Link Tracking Protection strips a curated list of known ad-network click IDs (gclid, fbclid, msclkid, etc.), not arbitrary query parameters — our geclickid / genewcomertasktoken are not affected. It also only applies to cross-site navigations from Mail, Messages, and Private Browsing, whereas the task-card click is a same-site navigation within the wiki. As of Safari 26 / iOS 26 the feature is still not enabled by default in regular browsing, so the condition this task was waiting on hasn't materialized. If a browser ever does start stripping unknown parameters generically, that's a broad problem across MediaWiki analytics and deserves a fresh task rather than this one.

Investigate how Safari in iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma will impact URLs generated in Wikimedia sitesClosed, DeclinedPublicActions

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Investigate how Safari in iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma will impact URLs generated in Wikimedia sites
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