No-Tracking URL Shortener

Why Most URL Shorteners Track Everything

URL shorteners like Bitly, Short.io, and Rebrandly are fundamentally analytics platforms disguised as link tools. Their business model depends on collecting click data: who clicked, when, where, on what device, from which page, and how often. This data powers their premium tiers, feeds advertising networks, and creates persistent behavioral profiles.

Even free-tier “simple” shorteners track clicks by default. The redirect through their server is the tracking mechanism — every visit is a data collection event, whether the link creator asked for analytics or not.

How thishere.com Eliminates Tracking

thishere.com cannot track clicks because it has no mechanism to do so. Here is why:

• No database lookups — Traditional shorteners redirect by looking up a code in a database. That lookup is the tracking event. thishere.com decodes the URL from the link itself, so no lookup occurs.
• No server-side URL processing — The original URL is encoded in your browser using JavaScript. The server only serves the decoding page; it never handles or sees the target URL.
• No click-through redirect — Visitors see the decoded destination URL and choose to proceed. This transparency replaces the invisible redirect that enables tracking in other services.

What URL Shortener Tracking Looks Like

When you click a typical shortened link, the shortener's server collects and stores:

thishere.com collects none of this. There is no mechanism in the architecture to do so.

Use Cases for Tracking-Free Link Shortening

• Sharing links on social media without giving a third party a record of your sharing habits
• Posting links on forums without enabling surveillance of who clicks them
• Sending links in messages when you want the recipient's click to be private
• Distributing URLs in documents that should not create trackable data trails
• Any context where “analytics” is unwanted surveillance rather than a useful feature