# Extra query parameter being added to links from emails, how do I prevent this?

**URL:** <https://forum.mautic.org/t/extra-query-parameter-being-added-to-links-from-emails-how-do-i-prevent-this/16375>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [October 1, 2020, 7:20am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/extra-query-parameter-being-added-to-links-from-emails-how-do-i-prevent-this/16375 "2020-10-01T07:20:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![thomastc](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/thomastc/32/1454_2.png) [@thomastc](https://forum.mautic.org/u/thomastc)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 7:20am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/extra-query-parameter-being-added-to-links-from-emails-how-do-i-prevent-this/16375/1 "2020-10-01T07:20:04Z")

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**Your software**

My Mautic version is: 2.16.2  
My PHP version is: 7.2.24

**Your problem**

We add a link to an email, for example  
`https://twitter.com/someaccount`

When the email is sent, Mautic turns this into a tracking link:  
`https://mautic.ourdomain.com/r/xxx?ct=yyy&`  
Here, `xxx` is a 25-character hexadecimal string, and `yyy` is a much longer string which is base64-encoded tracking data. So far, so good.

However, when requesting this URL, Mautic responds with a `Location` header (redirect) to  
`https://twitter.com/someaccount?r%2Fxxx=`  
The `xxx` is the same as in the redirect URL.

Twitter doesn’t mind and just gives you the right content, but in general, **this is a _different_ URL than the one we specified, so there’s no telling where it might lead!** In our case we are dealing with a rather picky web server which will redirect to the wrong place if any URL parameters are present.

**Where is this extra URL parameter coming from, and how do I stop Mautic from adding it?** Ideally to this one link (I imagine the cruft is meant for third parties tracking traffic from us), but globally if we have to.

[This topic is similar](https://forum.mautic.org/t/mautic-add-a-q-query-parameters-to-all-links/9539) but talks about a `q` parameter, which is not the same.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![thomastc](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/thomastc/32/1454_2.png) [@thomastc](https://forum.mautic.org/u/thomastc)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 8:25am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/extra-query-parameter-being-added-to-links-from-emails-how-do-i-prevent-this/16375/2 "2020-10-01T08:25:02Z")

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I dug into the source code and I believe it might be a bug in Mautic, although I can’t quite put my finger on it.

The relevant code is here:

> <https://github.com/mautic/mautic/blob/1b72d772006a835ab8d33ebdcc676e87c6d05c59/app/bundles/PageBundle/Controller/PublicController.php#L458>

In particular, I notice that `r%2Fxxx` decodes to `r/xxx` which is probably not added to the returned URL on purpose! The `ct` parameter is unset, which should leave `$query` an empty array, but note that there’s a stray `&` at the end of the original URL so maybe `$q` is not entirely empty. How `r/xxx` would end up as part of the incoming _query string_ though, remains a mystery to me.

Unfortunately we can’t upgrade to Mautic 3 yet because we’re waiting for some fixes to land there, so I’m hesitant to file a bug report in case this has already been fixed.