.

[esoomenona]

.

[sth]

What differences do they have? Why was the change made (I'm sure more money is the reason)? Do you guys verify the security of these sites before implementing them? Is our information secure?

more information please.

[esoomenona]

.

[sth]

Whenever you click a link on this site, it clicks through Vigilink/Skimlink first, which redirects you to your final destination. They used to use the former, and I recently noticed there was a change to the latter.

What technical benefit is there to our links running through redirection services?

edit: rephrased

[esoomenona]

.

[sth]

About SkimLinks:

In Their Own Words

"Our ground-breaking technology enables publishers to easily monetize online content in two ways - by converting normal product links into their equivalent affiliate links, and picking up product references in content and turning those into relevant, useful affiliate links too."

Yes, I figured as much.

Was this information publicly available before and I was just too lazy to look for it (regarding such services use on Geekhack, not the existence of said services)

[esoomenona]

.

[sth]

It's been mentioned before, by people who notice it going on. It's not necessarily hidden information, but if you don't know it's going on, no one is going to point it out to you.

I am curious and uncomfortable.

But that describes 99% of my waking hours.

[esoomenona]

.

[sth]

What The Dang can i get a signal boost in here

WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS PLEASE RESPOND

[SpAmRaY]

What The Dang can i get a signal boost in here

WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS PLEASE RESPOND

I think this falls into the 'need to know' category.

[Binge]

Whenever you click a link on this site, it clicks through Vigilink/Skimlink first, which redirects you to your final destination. They used to use the former, and I recently noticed there was a change to the latter.

Would you be able to illustrate where this vigilink/skimlink redirect is in the process of selecting links.  I am not getting any redirects.

Nevermind I found it,

<script type="text/javascript" src="//s.skimresources.com/js/21335X794039.skimlinks.js"></script>

[Photoelectric]

I've linked this discussion for those who are involved in the more technical aspect of maintaining this site, so they can comment.

From what I've been told, we stopped using Vigilink long ago for the desktop version of the site, but someone said that Tapatalk still redirects through it.  Never heard of Skimlink personally.  I know I used to notice slow redirects with Vigilink intermediary back when we used it, when browsing from my tablet, but that has not happened in quite a while.  (I do not use Tapatalk though).

[sth]

I've linked this discussion for those who are involved in the more technical aspect of maintaining this site, so they can comment.

From what I've been told, we stopped using Vigilink long ago for the desktop version of the site, but someone said that Tapatalk still redirects through it.  Never heard of Skimlink personally.  I know I used to notice slow redirects with Vigilink intermediary back when we used it, when browsing from my tablet, but that has not happened in quite a while.  (I do not use Tapatalk though).

for me the issue is absolutely not about performance. the fact that somebody is getting paid for things i click on at a community board that i have trusted not to do things like that (clearly ignorant on my part) is what upsets me. and yeah i'm sure the money is going to geekhack, but to what exactly? can you please provide some kind of report for the expenses? otherwise geekhack.org is just another potentially compromised site that is leaking my information and while there's not a LOT you can do to avoid that, i would prefer to at least know what the **** is going on.

[Binge]

For all those interested AdBlock extension for chrome/firefox blocks the script entirely.

[Photoelectric]

For all those interested AdBlock extension for chrome/firefox blocks the script entirely.

That probably explains why I haven't been noticing anything...

[SpAmRaY]

I've linked this discussion for those who are involved in the more technical aspect of maintaining this site, so they can comment.

From what I've been told, we stopped using Vigilink long ago for the desktop version of the site, but someone said that Tapatalk still redirects through it.  Never heard of Skimlink personally.  I know I used to notice slow redirects with Vigilink intermediary back when we used it, when browsing from my tablet, but that has not happened in quite a while.  (I do not use Tapatalk though).

for me the issue is absolutely not about performance. the fact that somebody is getting paid for things i click on at a community board that i have trusted not to do things like that (clearly ignorant on my part) is what upsets me. and yeah i'm sure the money is going to geekhack, but to what exactly? can you please provide some kind of report for the expenses? otherwise geekhack.org is just another potentially compromised site that is leaking my information and while there's not a LOT you can do to avoid that, i would prefer to at least know what the **** is going on.

They gotta pay the bills somehow. ¯\(°_o)/¯

[sth]

I've linked this discussion for those who are involved in the more technical aspect of maintaining this site, so they can comment.

From what I've been told, we stopped using Vigilink long ago for the desktop version of the site, but someone said that Tapatalk still redirects through it.  Never heard of Skimlink personally.  I know I used to notice slow redirects with Vigilink intermediary back when we used it, when browsing from my tablet, but that has not happened in quite a while.  (I do not use Tapatalk though).

for me the issue is absolutely not about performance. the fact that somebody is getting paid for things i click on at a community board that i have trusted not to do things like that (clearly ignorant on my part) is what upsets me. and yeah i'm sure the money is going to geekhack, but to what exactly? can you please provide some kind of report for the expenses? otherwise geekhack.org is just another potentially compromised site that is leaking my information and while there's not a LOT you can do to avoid that, i would prefer to at least know what the **** is going on.

They gotta pay the bills somehow. ¯\(°_o)/¯

i am a member of another keyboard related website that has optional paid membership. they don't have this sort of problem.

[jdcarpe]

Yeah, TBH I'd rather pay a monthly membership fee.

[SpAmRaY]

I've linked this discussion for those who are involved in the more technical aspect of maintaining this site, so they can comment.

From what I've been told, we stopped using Vigilink long ago for the desktop version of the site, but someone said that Tapatalk still redirects through it.  Never heard of Skimlink personally.  I know I used to notice slow redirects with Vigilink intermediary back when we used it, when browsing from my tablet, but that has not happened in quite a while.  (I do not use Tapatalk though).

for me the issue is absolutely not about performance. the fact that somebody is getting paid for things i click on at a community board that i have trusted not to do things like that (clearly ignorant on my part) is what upsets me. and yeah i'm sure the money is going to geekhack, but to what exactly? can you please provide some kind of report for the expenses? otherwise geekhack.org is just another potentially compromised site that is leaking my information and while there's not a LOT you can do to avoid that, i would prefer to at least know what the **** is going on.

They gotta pay the bills somehow. ¯\(°_o)/¯

i am a member of another keyboard related website that has optional paid membership. they don't have this sort of problem.

Yeah I go there to...

Yeah, TBH I'd rather pay a monthly membership fee.

I think they should let us pay to get our own subforums, that'd be awesome.

[sth]

Regardless, can we please get some CURRENT administrative response to this?

[sth]

**** no is this dropping off the spy while i'm at my desk.
signal boost. what's going on mkawa?

[sth]

Clam Daniels! I'm furious!

[esoomenona]

.

[sth]

I'm making a ruckus.

[esoomenona]

.

[sth]

I'm feeling stranded by our administrators!

[mkawa]

viglink was invasive and annoying and doesn't help collect useful information to serve the community. skim is largely analytics engine and is not invasive.

[sth]

Thanks! But still

[esoomenona]

.

[sth]

Who Analyzes the Analyzers?

[mkawa]

here's the current setup. skimlinks wraps google analytics to give semantic-web style analytics on visitors to the forum (not members, just guests). it gives the usual google analytics: referrers, time spent on the site, exit paths, etc. i believe skimlinks also tries to pull some more structured information out of this. it tries to determine what interests guests, whether they consider signing up, what the conversion rate for signing up is, and what metrics correlate with signups.

here's the technical information on what and how it tracks:

http://skimlinks.com/visitor-cookies

you can turn it off as a guest by simply disabling cookies for our site, or by opting out of google analytics, since the core metric are gathered by google. the thing about guests is that, obviously, they don't post. however, guests visitors are in the majority of users present on any forum at any given time. we have a pretty good idea what helps you guys since you post and can be vocal about what improves the community, but the guest contingent is, by definition, silent. skimlinks obviously pushes their monetization services, but that is how _they_ monetize their userbase. However, they offer their wrapper and analytics engine for free as well as kind of a carrot-stick thing.

[MythicalWagyu]

AdBlock + Ghostery + Disconnect.me helps a bit with my paranoia... it's frightening how many trackers/analytics/etc are running on most sites.
(ghostery has no problem catching google analytics + skim links)

https://www.ghostery.com/
https://disconnect.me/

[mkawa]

we don't track registered user activity, so no need for paranoia if you're registered

[MythicalWagyu]

we don't track registered user activity, so no need for paranoia if you're registered

Hahah yeah I'm not too worried here... holy poop though, click on a Facebook link sometime and weep at all the crap running in the background:

(this one isn't even bad compared to some sites)