To warn MNers that if you post a link copied from your Facebook or Instagram account you’re outing yourseld

[APATEKPHILLIPEWATCH]

If you’re logged in to Instagram or Facebook, and you copy a link to paste into a MN thread (or indeed anywhere), anyone clicking that link can see your profile. It pops up saying “Joe Bloggs sent you a link. Add them as a friend?” and your profile picture is accompanied.

Ive seen it loads and didnt wanna post on individual threads telling people as it feels like an invitation to check out who that person really is. Posting in AIBU for traffic - it’s shocking IMO, but thought I’d warn people who didn’t realise. Not anything MN can do about it, it’s a Meta issue.

Yes I’m not sure why I’m being accused of making it up when I’ve shown screenshots and others have said they’ve seen it too. I’m not sure what one would gain from lying about this

If people don’t want to believe you, then let them carry on posting links to their personal social media accounts. It’s them that lose out 😂

Thanks OP - I'd not come across this before, though I rarely share things from Instagram (and to be fair I'm not anonymous).

I do routinely prune out any 'cruft' in a link that I'm about to share though so the igsh business is unlikely to appear in a link I'd shared, perhaps that makes a difference.

People regularly copy and paste Amazon links here, which contain long screeds of computer-readable alphanumeric gibberish. Everything from /ref onwards can be safely deleted. Note that if you're pruning a link on Mumsnet and it's gone blue you'll need to click on it to edit both the text (visible) and link (what it actually points to, e.g. Google - visible = Google, link (invisible = google.co.uk. If I deleted the last couple of letters from that blue linked word (so that it read Goog) it would still take you to Google when clicked.

The most risky URL/link I've come across (never seen it shared by anyone thankfully) is the one when you're logged into Deliveroo - it includes a geohash, a string of letters and numbers that, if converted, will show your location very precisely. An example below. Paste the bit starting gcpuu... into the box next to 'geohash' here to see what I mean https://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/geohash.html

https://deliveroo.co.uk/restaurants/london/victoria?fulfillment_method=DELIVERY&*geohash=gcpuuz2zjk55 *

Jo