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Old April 7th 21, 10:05 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Dan Marotta
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,601
Default new SSA web site

I've been using the Brave browser for the past 3-4 months. I just
opened a new tab and was told that 65,786 trackers and ads have been
blocked. I still get a lot of spam; how it gets past my spam blocker, I
don't know, but I'm going to have a look at spam assassin.

Dan
5J

On 4/7/21 2:37 PM, Moshe Braner wrote:
On 4/7/2021 3:45 PM, Soartech wrote:
I just got a reply from the SSA (Alexa Owens) and she apoligized and
sent me this link: https://www.ssa.org/my-account/lost-password/
which looks identical to me to the one they sent. But somehow, this
one does not have the TrackingÂ* problem the first one had.
Maybe they shut off the tracking requirement??


A link in a web page has two parts: the visible text label, and the
(invisible) URL it links to.Â* A link, such as that in the email from the
SSA, that shows the URL is supposedly leads to, actually has two URLs:
the visible one (sometimes misleading), and the invisible one it
actually links to.

The reason you may get warnings about "icptrack.com" is that the SSA
chose to send these mass emails by using a service, "iContact".Â* It,
like MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc, converts every link to a trackable
one.Â* In this case the visible URL is:

Â*Â*Â* https://www.ssa.org/my-account/lost-password/

but the actual URL it leads to is:

https://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay...gTymqcTLusKni6...
Â*(lots more gobbledigook).

In theory your clicking on such a link can be tracked, although I doubt
in this case the SSA will use that feature of the iContact service.

I hate such links because I don't want to be tracked, and also you don't
know where it is really taking you, after the tracking bit.

But in this case you can copy and paste the visible URL from that email
into your browser and get to that page without being tracked.