How to disable zsh substitution/autocomplete with URL and backslashes

Question

I am using zsh with oh-my-zsh on Ubuntu:14.04.

The shell autocompletes escape character with backslash when I paste a URL.

For ex

Answer 1

I ended up at this answer but still could not understand why pasting a URL was escaping characters like & ? [ ] and causing my curl commands to fail.

The culprit (for me) was iTerm2 on Mac.

To disable the behavior, go into iTerm2 > Preferences > Profiles > Terminal and UNCHECK Terminal may enable paste bracketing.

Make sure you do this for the correct profile.