The use of URL shorteners on the Flight Rising website is strictly prohibited.
This applies to all URL shortening services and anywhere on our platform where a player is able to enter text and interact with the community or team members of Flight Rising or Stormlight Workshop, LLC.
Examples of prohibited services; this list includes but is not limited to:
- Bitly
- TinyURL
- Rebrandly
- Sniply
- Short(dot)io
Areas of the site short links are not allowed on include but are not limited to:
- The Flight Rising forums
- Game Database
- Forum signatures
- Private messages
- Dragon biographies
- Clan profiles
- Player and dragon broadcasts
- Support tickets
What is an URL shortener and why are they not allowed?
At best, using an URL shortener in a forum is poor forum etiquette.
URL shorteners mask the destination location of the link, preventing you from seeing exactly where the link goes when hovered over or when using ‘Inspect’.
URL shorteners are meant to be used on social media platforms where there may be character limits and engagement tracking. These services provide marketing options that allow the person posting the link to collect metrics (data) on the people who click their link. This information can be drilled down to even your city location.
When interacting with a shortened url posted by a business on social media, your click becomes one of many and not personally identifiable. When you click in a forum after being pinged, interact with the person posting the link after clicking, in off-site chat, and especially in a private or direct message, you risk the other person collecting some very granular marketing data on you—just from clicking on a link from an URL shortening service.
It’s the worst case scenarios that drive our decision:
- The collection of your data on an individual level by a third-party.
- Masking of links to malicious websites.
- Masking of links to other rule-violating content.
This is why we’re prohibiting the use of URLs that have been shortened by a service on our website.
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At the time of this policy update, we will only be removing URL shorteners as a matter of moderation, but repeated attempts to post them on our site will lead to penalties up to and including the loss of forum privileges or account access, based on what area of the site the shortened URL was posted on or the severity of the content linked. |
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