When you hit the share button on social media apps such as Instagram, Facebook, or Threads, these sites tack on a tracker to the link you’re sharing. This tracker means that Instagram can tell who you’ve shared the link with, and it likely uses this information to further optimize its algorithm for ads. While the tech here is sneaky, it is easy to remove tracking information from these links.
How do social media tracking links work?
It’s actually pretty easy to spot a link that has trackers. To check it out, copy the link to any Instagram post and paste it somewhere safe, like your notes app. A normal Instagram link looks like this:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVrMKVVAaBi/
The same link with tracking has a bunch of additional characters at the end:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVrMKVVAaBi/?igsh=cGd5cGx4enJmcThu
Every character after that ? is used to identify that your profile shared the link. While this example highlights Instagram, the same
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