[DEV] I built a free link cleaner that strips tracking params, unwraps affiliate redirects, and checks for malware — no data collection, no signup [beta]

Hey everyone,

I've been building TWDxLinks — a tool that cleans up messy URLs (tracking params, affiliate wrappers, shortener redirects) before you share or click them. Wanted to share it here and get some real-world testing before I call it done.

Link: https://links.thewebdexter.com

What it does:
– Strips tracking/marketing params (UTM tags, click IDs, and hundreds of other known trackers) from any URL
– Unwraps affiliate redirect links and URL shorteners back to the real destination
– Cleans junk from the path and hash portions of a URL too, not just the query string
– Follows redirects (up to 5 hops) and shows you where a link actually goes before you click it
– Runs a server-side malware/safety DNS check on the final destination
– Shows a link preview (title, image, description) so you can sanity-check a URL without opening it
– Free web app + a documented, open REST API (no API key, no signup) for anyone who wants to build on top of it
– iOS Shortcut so you can clean links straight from the share sheet

On privacy — this was the whole point of building it:
– I did not want this to be "just another tracker" that farms link data, so it's designed with no data collection at the code level:
– No IP addresses are ever logged, anywhere
– Results are cached at Cloudflare's edge, encrypted (AES-256-GCM) — even I can't read cached URLs/results at rest
– There's no database of "who cleaned what" — nothing links a request back to a person
– No analytics scripts, no ad trackers, no third-party JS of any kind on the site
– The only optional data is if you choose to report a bad clean (missed tracker), and even then it's just the URL itself, no IP, no identifying info
– The whole thing is bot/DoS-protected with Cloudflare Turnstile, but that's invisible — you won't see a captcha.

Completely free for personal use. No paywall, no premium tier, no rate-limited "free trial." The API is open for anyone building personal tools/scripts against it.

Important — this is a beta. It's functional and I use it daily myself, but it's not the finished, polished product. Things I'm actively still working on: edge cases in certain sites' redirect chains, expanding the tracker-param ruleset (it updates daily from public blocklists, but misses happen), and general UX polish.

If you hit a bug, a link that doesn't clean properly, or something looks off — reply to this post or DM me on Reddit. I'm the only one working on this right now, so Reddit is genuinely the fastest way to reach me and get it fixed. I'd rather find issues now from real usage than after a "1.0" launch.

Would love feedback on:
1. Any trackers/params it's missing
2. Any sites where the redirect-following breaks
3. Whether the API docs make sense to someone who isn't me

Thanks for reading — happy to answer anything in the comments.