Viglink hijacking links in posts? - Page 2

ehMax · Aug 5th, 2012, 10:47 PM

Did some more looking into it, and you shouldn't be getting the message with Ad Blocker installed anymore.

Viglink is still fully installed on ehMac, as it is 100% for sure on Macrumors.com, they use the full service 100% the same as ehMac.

Further comment, Viglink is not an unknown, untrusted 3rd party, companies like vBulletin themselves and several others have an option built right into their software to implement the technology.

John Clay · Aug 5th, 2012, 10:50 PM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by ehMax
	Did some more looking into it, and you shouldn't be getting the message with Ad Blocker installed anymore. Viglink is still fully installed on ehMac, as it is 100% for sure on Macrumors.com, they use the full service 100% the same as ehMac. Further comment, Viglink is not an unknown, untrusted 3rd party, companies like vBulletin themselves and several others have an option built right into their software to implement the technology.

Thanks for fixing that. Wonder how it got turned on in the first place. Google found other places with a similar problem.

Viglink is most certainly an unknown and untrusted third party for me. I've never dealt with them, heard of them, and certainly don't want them having any information related to me or my usage.

rgray · Aug 6th, 2012, 09:49 AM

Mr Mayor, I PAID money to you for a lifetime membership, mug # 28 , to avoid ads and so on. Are you passing my clicks on to this third party, because I don't think you have a right to do so.

ehMax · Aug 6th, 2012, 01:01 PM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by rgray
	Mr Mayor, I PAID money to you for a lifetime membership, mug # 28 , to avoid ads and so on. Are you passing my clicks on to this third party, because I don't think you have a right to do so.

The Lifetime Membership makes it so that it's members do not see ads, it is not intended, setup or implied that content posted by those members are not monetized.

Content is monetized on ehMac. This includes links that are posted on the site that link to a commercial website that solicit purchases from visitors to ehMac. ehMac simply implements technology created by Viglink that inserts a referral / affiliate code where applicable.

This technology is implemented by many other Mac forums like Macrumors.com and hundreds of thousands of other forums and sites and is built right into forum software like vBulletin. Viglink is just one of several companies like Skimlinks.com. Viglink is a large company financed by venture capital from Google.

Publishers do have the legal and ethical/moral right to monetize the content posted on their site, including outgoing links to commercial sites that sell and solicit sales to their visitors.

We try to keep a nice balance on ehMac. Many sites use automatic link insertion into content, post banner ads within content, which we avoid. Appleinsider.com and MacNN.com have moved to the Huddler.com platform. This company has courted ehMac to move to their platform for several years now and has made many promises of greatly increased revenue, but I have avoided for now as I don't think the platform is there yet for our members. We've set the site to automatically reduce ads for free based on users involvement in the site at a certain amount of post counts. We don't block the use of ad-blocking software, we don't data mine, we don't share on email user list etc...

Think we do a fair job here. The Viglink affiliate code insertion is totally unobtrusive, doesn't do anything negatively to a users experience nor is it denying members of anything.

There are now disclosure links at the bottom of each page that says, "Links monetized by VigLink" and there is a line disclosure in the terms and conditions of ehMac.