So you’ll see these refers in lots of sites, and it’s likely just statistics collection. If the referring text is always the same, it’s that the site legitimately just wants to know hwo many people are clicking a particular link.
You’ll see it really often in email newsletters that they will end in ref=fromemail or ref=fronsocial when posted to social media. On the database side, all the tracking information would be aggregated under the same one.
As with everything, this can be used in a harmless way or more maliciously, but at end of the day, all it helps is identify where particular traffic is coming from. For YouTube, the ID is connected to who shared the link, when it was shared, etc. It attempts to use that information against the person who clicked the link to try and work out better ads and YouTube recommendations for both of them, so you’ll stay in YouTube longer and see more ads.
So you’ll see these refers in lots of sites, and it’s likely just statistics collection. If the referring text is always the same, it’s that the site legitimately just wants to know hwo many people are clicking a particular link.
You’ll see it really often in email newsletters that they will end in ref=fromemail or ref=fronsocial when posted to social media. On the database side, all the tracking information would be aggregated under the same one.
As with everything, this can be used in a harmless way or more maliciously, but at end of the day, all it helps is identify where particular traffic is coming from. For YouTube, the ID is connected to who shared the link, when it was shared, etc. It attempts to use that information against the person who clicked the link to try and work out better ads and YouTube recommendations for both of them, so you’ll stay in YouTube longer and see more ads.