Removing Link Trackers
Many links carry more than an address. A link copied from a social app or a marketing email often has extra codes at the end, such as ?utm_source=newsletter or &fbclid=IwAR3…. Those codes are there to tell the website where the click came from, which campaign it belonged to, and sometimes who shared it. With Remove link trackers turned on in Settings → Privacy, Vavo Chat removes them from links you send.
An Example
You paste:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&si=Xk2…&utm_source=share
Your contact receives:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
The link still opens the same video. Only the parts that identify where it was shared from are gone.
It Happens on Your Device
Trackers are removed on your phone, before the message is encrypted. Nothing is sent anywhere to do it, and neither Vavo's servers nor anyone else sees the original link.
What Gets Removed
Vavo Chat removes only codes it recognises as trackers and leaves everything else alone. Removing every code would break real links: a video's ?v=, a product's ?id= or a search query all have to survive. The list includes:
- Campaign and analytics codes used across the web, such as
utm_*,pk_*,mtm_*and_ga. - Ad-click identifiers from Google, Microsoft, Meta, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Reddit and others, such as
gclid,msclkid,fbclid,ttclidandtwclid. - Email-marketing codes from Mailchimp, HubSpot, Marketo and similar services.
- Share codes specific to one site, such as YouTube's and Spotify's
si, Instagram'sigsh, TikTok's share identifiers, and Amazon's referral tags. These are removed only on links to that site, because the same name can mean something real elsewhere.
Where It Applies
Links are cleaned in text you send from the app, in media captions, when you edit a message, when you reply from a notification, when you share into Vavo Chat from another app, and in messages sent from the web companion paired with your phone.
It does not change:
- Links in messages you receive. Those arrive exactly as the sender wrote them.
- Links you forward.
- Redirect links such as
l.facebook.com/l.php?u=…orgoogle.com/url?q=…. These are not unwrapped to the page they point at. - Anything after the
#in a link.
Turning It Off
The setting is on by default. If a site stops working because a code it needed was removed, turn off Remove link trackers in Settings → Privacy and links will be sent exactly as you typed them. The setting applies to this device only and is not synced to your account.
Related
Questions
If anything here is unclear, contact us at [email protected] or visit our Support page.