Viglink redirect links

[RetroLisa]

I noticed in a couple of other threads that people were having an issue with the Viglink redirect links. I think I'm seeing the same thing. All of the links on my board have a monstrously long 'redirect/viglink.com' address in front of them. They all appear to go to the correct page, but when you hover over the link it has a really long URL like this:

redirect.viglink.com/?key=bbb516d91daee20498798694a42dd559%20&u=http%3A//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%2527s_cradle

It's even happening on links posted in this support forum. I think it just started today.

I understand that this redirect service has been operating in the background for quite some time, but do these long redirect links need to show? Like another poster said, they look suspicious, and I'm afraid they will scare people away from clicking on helpful, legitimate links. Or did I see on another thread where Viglink admitted there was a problem and were in the process of fixing it?

Thanks in advance for your reply

[VS Admin]

May 25, 2016 17:13:03 GMT -8 RetroLisa said:

I noticed in a couple of other threads that people were having an issue with the Viglink redirect links. I think I'm seeing the same thing. All of the links on my board have a monstrously long 'redirect/viglink.com' address in front of them. They all appear to go to the correct page, but when you hover over the link it has a really long URL like this:

redirect.viglink.com/?key=bbb516d91daee20498798694a42dd559%20&u=http%3A//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%2527s_cradle

It's even happening on links posted in this support forum. I think it just started today.

I understand that this redirect service has been operating in the background for quite some time, but do these long redirect links need to show? Like another poster said, they look suspicious, and I'm afraid they will scare people away from clicking on helpful, legitimate links. Or did I see on another thread where Viglink admitted there was a problem and were in the process of fixing it?

Thanks in advance for your reply

Are you using an ad blocker?

[RetroLisa]

No ad blocker, but I do run a version of NoScript on Firefox. When visiting my board, I always choose 'temporarily allow all this page'. However, I just realized that after choosing to allow Viglink to execute scripts on the page, the problem I mentioned disappears and the links appear normal again. So I guess it's a script thing, and the links probably appear fine to everyone else.

I don't know much about scripts, but I do know that this has never happened before today. I've never had to alter my script options to make links appear properly. I only mention it because it started today, which made me think that something had changed on the programming end. And when I saw another thread about the same issue, I thought I  had stumbled onto something

[VS Admin]

May 25, 2016 19:06:27 GMT -8 RetroLisa said:

No ad blocker, but I do run a version of NoScript on Firefox. When visiting my board, I always choose 'temporarily allow all this page'. However, I just realized that after choosing to allow Viglink to execute scripts on the page, the problem I mentioned disappears and the links appear normal again. So I guess it's a script thing, and the links probably appear fine to everyone else.

I don't know much about scripts, but I do know that this has never happened before today. I've never had to alter my script options to make links appear properly. I only mention it because it started today, which made me think that something had changed on the programming end. And when I saw another thread about the same issue, I thought I  had stumbled onto something

We detect when VigLink doesn't properly load on forums due to being blocked, and we rewrite outbound links using JavaScript. If you whitelist the VigLink script you won't have this issue.