Most people notice tracking parameters only because they make links ugly. The more important issue is that they preserve context. A long query string can tell a destination page which campaign produced the click, which ad variant or email sent the visit, and whether the session should be tied to a marketing pipeline the user never consciously agreed to inspect.
Google's own documentation makes the mechanics plain. Manual UTM parameters are specifically designed to record source, medium, campaign, and related marketing detail. Google Ads auto-tagging does the same job in a more platform-specific way by appending click identifiers that downstream analytics systems can read. None of this is hidden from the companies using it. It is mostly hidden from the person carrying the link around in their address bar.
That matters because the context can survive longer than people expect. Links get copied into notes, pasted into chats, reopened from email, bookmarked, or handed from one app to another. If the URL keeps the campaign or click metadata attached, the next page still learns something about how the session began before any cookie prompt or account login enters the picture.
Mozilla's tracking-protection documentation is one sign that browsers now treat some query-parameter behavior as a real privacy problem rather than a cosmetic one. When a browser starts stripping known tracking parameters, it is acknowledging that part of the profiling layer lives directly in the URL. That is useful because it reduces one easy path for referral context to keep following the user across sites and sessions.
At the same time, URL cleanup is not a complete answer. A site can still rely on cookies, browser fingerprinting, account state, and first-party analytics to reconnect the person. But reducing tracking parameters still matters because it removes a cheap and durable clue from the chain. It makes the link say less before the page even has a chance to ask for more.
That is the right way to talk about URL tracking parameters in the Cloak story. They are not the whole surveillance system. They are one of the easiest pieces of it to carry around accidentally. A good privacy defense should strip what it can, explain what was removed, and make the user less likely to drag campaign metadata from one high-intent session into the next one without noticing.