The dedicated share buttons will often give you a link generated on the fly, with all the tracking info on the back end. For example, if google was to do this (which they thankfully don't), the link might look like "google.com/?query=cce1602b-5af6-4d95-965b-e88450afc266", and in the database there would be all sorts of tracking info tied to it. I can't edit that URL to dissaciate from that information, so if I share it, they would know it was me who shared it, and not someone else visiting it on their own.
Of course, companies can and do track you via less obvious means all the time, but this is just one small way you can foul a data point for them.
> They absolutely do that, but when you copy-paste them to share elsewhere, you can manually strip all the tracking info out.
If they create custom urls for everyone that look like https://website.com/uuid/ and don't redirect you to the real url... it is not possible to strip anything unless you do some research to find another URL that redirects you to the same page. Not sure what that would do to your search engine rankings though...
For example, when I search Google for 'Hacker News', the URL I arrive at is "https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hacker+ne...". If I want to send that to a friend, I would edit the link to be "https://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news".
The dedicated share buttons will often give you a link generated on the fly, with all the tracking info on the back end. For example, if google was to do this (which they thankfully don't), the link might look like "google.com/?query=cce1602b-5af6-4d95-965b-e88450afc266", and in the database there would be all sorts of tracking info tied to it. I can't edit that URL to dissaciate from that information, so if I share it, they would know it was me who shared it, and not someone else visiting it on their own.
Of course, companies can and do track you via less obvious means all the time, but this is just one small way you can foul a data point for them.