Is it new that we now have the typical more characters than in the actual URL attached by question mark to URLs for forum content?
Why this is? I get why Amazon and eveyone like them do it, and I learned about just cutting the question mark and all that follows right the F off, but I woukd like to know who puts it there for this simple forum.
It's just annoying, even if it easily fixed.
a7
Could you give an example of where you're seeing this behaviour? I can't say that I've noticed anything added.
Here
https://forum.arduino.cc/t/arduino-controlled-7-4v-li-po-power-supply-design/889024/37?_gl=1*1jfyff2*_up*MQ..*_ga*NTcyNTEyODYzLjE3Mzc0MTI4NjE.*_ga_NEXN8H46L5*MTczNzQxMjg2MC4xLjAuMTczNzQxMjg2MC4wLjAuNjYyNDM3NA..
Everything from the question mark.
a7
Apologies, I was unclear. Where are you seeing this happen? What are you doing when you get this junk? For example, I went to that topic and reply, clicked on the link button and saw this in my clipboard:
https://forum.arduino.cc/t/arduino-controlled-7-4v-li-po-power-supply-design/889024/37?u=van_der_decken
which was junk free.
This has been happening for at least the last two, maybe three weeks? I'm on desktop Safari right now, which happens to hide the whole URL, and just show the host; so out of sight, out of mind. But easy enough to see on Chrome or whatever, just opening topics to read, as long as the window is wide enough to show the polluted URL.
It's quite distasteful.
You're seeing this just by opening a topic? That's odd.
I wonder... every so often there's a popup requesting your permission for (and it's been a while since I've seen this so I won't get the wording anywhere near) "all cookies" or "necessary cookies only". I tend to hit "necessary cookies only". Do you by any chance remember if you accepted "all cookies"? Why it should make a difference to the actual URLs isn't immediately apparent but it just popped into my head so I thought I'd throw it out there.
Ah, well that would certainly explain it. Though it's no longer -20 here, there's no danger of beach weather here for another 5-6 months (and then it'll be too wet to go to the beach!). No beach weather = no tracking junk? 
I guess this isn't junk
...?u=van_der_decken
I don't get ...?u=alto777 from what I see, but I have no doubt that it means something to someone or some process.
As for what I was doing: just logged in and using an iPad, looking at posts on these fora, responding and so forth. Occasionally I will look for and sometimes find a thread or post from the past to copy/paste, that's when I see the ? junk.
a7
Hmm. The mystery deepens.
Not seeing it on my desktop, nor on my Android tablet.
I imagine the user name is attached for something or other to do with badges and counting how many times someone clicks on a link you've put in a message. Honestly, if there's not money involved (for me! ) I don't pay all that much attention so I could be wrong.
Edit: I think a lightbulb just came on. I was going to say that I had an ad blocker running on both my desktop and tablet and then remembered that I also have tracking disabled on both of them. That could be the difference.
Are you using Firefox?
I've also noticed it (in Firefox); seems to happen if I have Firefox open for a long time on the forum. Highly annoying. Solution for me is to close Firefox and open it again.
I use Chrome on MacOS and Safari on iPads.
Since this seemed like a change, and I don't change things until I simply can't avoid doing, I thought it was a something new in these fora or the machinery behind it.
a7
Sounds more likely if you're using a different browser and OS.
If you mean certain user/browser/device/OS combinations make this more likely, no doubt.
I did change nothing, I'm hanging on to hard 2021 or so…
a7
The _gl parameter is added by Google Analytics:
You will get a URL with a u parameter if you click the 
icon at the bottom of a post.
This parameter is used to give your account credit towards earning the "Share" badges when a visitor arrives at the forum through a link to a forum post you shared on an external website:
So this u parameter is completely unrelated to the _gl parameter reported by @alto777. I personally remove even the u parameter just because I have a habit of trimming all cruft off URLs (and I don't care about badges), but I don't find the u parameter to be too annoying.
The _gl parameter is more problematic because it is so ridiculously long. The format actually conflicts with the forum's markup renderer. For example, this URL:
https://forum.arduino.cc/t/arduino-controlled-7-4v-li-po-power-supply-design/889024/37?_gl=1*1jfyff2*_up*MQ..*_ga*NTcyNTEyODYzLjE3Mzc0MTI4NjE.*_ga_NEXN8H46L5*MTczNzQxMjg2MC4xLjAuMTczNzQxMjg2MC4wLjAuNjYyNDM3NA..
is rendered as:
Arduino Controlled 7.4V Li-Po Power Supply Design - #37 by alto777.._gaNTcyNTEyODYzLjE3Mzc0MTI4NjE._ga_NEXN8H46L5MTczNzQxMjg2MC4xLjAuMTczNzQxMjg2MC4wLjAuNjYyNDM3NA..
Note how the first part of the URL was rendered as a human friendly link, but the last part was left behind, with some components styled with italics (caused by the presence of * in the parameter value).
I only have the default browser privacy settings and I do occasionally get these cross-domain parameters on my forum URLs.
The only thing unusual about my browser that is potentially relevant is I have this nice extension installed:
I'm encountering this periodically on a machine with the latest version of Google Chrome on Windows 11. I haven't noticed it on my Linux or macOS machines (where I also use Google Chrome), but I don't use the forum often on those machines so there is a good chance that I would also encounter it on those machines if I only used the forum enough.
Ah. My ad blocker is likely the reason I haven't seem them then. I just checked: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Tag Services, they're all on my block list.
I had noticed also those "crappy" URL for a few weeks, I clean them up but it's annoying...
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