cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/29675306
I am not the author.
I found this blog to have both a short summary of the reasons as well as a pretty complete overview of the options for protecting against this specific threat model. I can just send this to people and they’ll understand the why and the how.
That’s not an affiliate link that’s an anonymous tracking link.
I noted that this was something added automatically by Ghost, the blogging platform the website is hosted on.
However, ultimately there is no good way to discern if a link like that is not an affiliate link or a non-anonymous tracking link, particularly for the average user. Particularly when the link does not include
nofollow
on the anchor tag.