Trackless Links

A privacy-first Safari extension for iOS and macOS. The first production deployment of CRED-1 for on-device, client-side credibility warnings.

About

Trackless Links is a Safari extension that cleans tracking parameters from URLs and warns users about low-credibility destinations, entirely on-device. There are no server calls, no telemetry, and no account. The extension runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

It serves as the first production integration of the CRED-1 open multi-signal domain credibility dataset, demonstrating that source-level information integrity research can be deployed in real consumer software without sacrificing privacy.

Safari extension iOS & macOS On-device No telemetry CRED-1 integration

How CRED-1 is integrated

CRED-1 is bundled with the app as a static JSON snapshot. When the Safari extension processes a URL, it performs three steps locally:

  1. Strip known tracking parameters such as utm_source, fbclid, gclid, mc_eid, and similar markers before the destination site is contacted.
  2. Look up the cleaned destination domain in the bundled CRED-1 snapshot.
  3. If the domain is flagged as low-credibility, surface a lightweight warning in Safari so the user can decide whether to proceed.

Because CRED-1 ships inside the app, no URL ever leaves the device, no third party sees the user's browsing graph, and the entire credibility pipeline is auditable.

Project links

Research context

Trackless Links is the deployment partner for two strands of the broader research program:

Both projects share the same underlying argument: when synthetic media and manipulated sources become harder to distinguish from authentic content, trust must increasingly be supported by reproducible, on-device infrastructure rather than by centralized scoring services or intuition alone.

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