when we click a share-button on a website or in an app, we can send the info directly to twitter, facebook etc. however, if you blindly follow this strategy, you fall into a trap: the link contains more informations than the ones you want to share. example:

the top entry shows a copied link in the new york times app. after the ? sign you find the string “referringSource…“. it transfers the information that you not only share the article, but also notify twitter etc. that you did this via a share button. in this case it‘s not really dramatic. in others it certainly is.

i always try to copy/paste links into a text editor (or into a new email window which i later discard) to truncate the link as in the second link. both links lead the viewer to that article, but the second link is leaner and tells the new york times, visited by your follower, nothing about where it came from.