The "share" link underneath a post includes the sharing user's ID for the purposes of awarding the user with Announcer, Booster, and Publicist badges in case enough users from different IP addresses click on the link.
However, this has the side effect of publicly disclosing what the sharing user's account on the site is. While this is OK to many users, some users may not want to do this in some cases. The only workaround in this case is to manually remove the user ID portion of the link (or use a script that does so automatically, or follow the link while logged out, etc.). Except, then, the user won't qualify for the badges.
Can we please anonymize or hash this user ID, so that users can still continue to earn badges for sharing links, while not publicly indicating in plain text what the sharing user's account on the site is?
This is not a duplicate of Privacy leak in permalink? as that question simply asks about the user ID, and the answer (and declining reason) there is so that publicity badges can be supported. This request can be considered a reconsideration request of that one. Anonymizing or hashing the user ID will still allow for publicity badges (satisfying the declining reason there), while also resolving the privacy concerns raised in that request.
This has also come up in an interesting way: there have been cases where the badge has been misused to prank users: a prankster can take a shared link to a post, change the user ID to that of the prank target, and deliberately load the link from different VPN IP addresses to award them a publicity badge. While this may seem like a harmless prank, it can actually cause harm if the post was controversial or promoted negative ideas: it permanently marks the user as being associated with or potentially in support of the controversial ideas. Implementing this will also prevent such pranks or trolling.