Unravel links for better browsing

There are a lot of analytical, marketing, and advertising tracking services between you and what you want on the web. Links in email newsletters, on search engines and your favourite blogs, links forwarded from family in Whatsapp, and from social media often go through one more more tracking services before the final destination. You think you are clicking on The Verge story about a new iPhone but there are 3 hidden turnpikes inbetween.

As an example lets say you want to donate to a charity so you Google donate

That first result looks good, Doctors Without Borders do great work. Google says the link is an ad but it looks safe enough:

donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/medicalcare/donatenow

Only it doesn’t. First it goes to a really long and complicated link in Google’s advertising system:

www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=…

Then it goes to another company’s system;

bs.serving-sys.com/BurstingPipe/AdServer.bs?cn…

I have no idea who serving-sys.com are. Only after those two redirects, and two extra cookies, do you get to the Doctors Without…