Do not use intermediate "anonymizing" services when posting links on Oppaitime.
What's the point of an anonymizing service?
When browsers follow a link, they have historically tried to helpfully inform the destination site where the user was referred from to get there. This means if you were on the site "a.com" and clicked a link to "b.com", your browser would inform "b.com" that you came from "a.com".
This has obvious privacy implications. A lot of the time, you don't want a site knowing where you were previously browsing. Doubly so when coming from a torrent or porn site. In response, intermediate link services cropped up that would wrap a url in their own url. This new url would point to the intermediate service's website, which promised to simply redirect you to the destination site. This way, the destination site would see you being referred by the anonymizing service instead of the original site. Use of these services became popular within tracker communities.
A better way
Since then, browsers have implemented the referrer-policy standard, which allows websites to instruct the browser when to send referrers and when not to. Oppaitime, of course, instructs browsers to never send the referrer at all when linked to any site outside of our domain. This alone completely eliminates any reason to use an anonymizing service. Additionally, there are reasons why using an anonymizing service can be bad, and since there's no good reason to use them, it makes sense to ban them completely.
Can they hurt?
For one, anonymizing services tend not to redirect immediately. They make sure to direct you to a branded page informing you about their services, and lingering there a while before sending you on to your real destination. This just slows down your browsing.
More importantly, these anonymizing services usually have no public business model. It's possible that they operate a massive free man-in-the-middle for internet requests out of the goodness of their hearts, but it's more likely that they are the ones tracking you.
As such, nobody should ever use anonymizing services like deferrer.org or anon.to when posting a link on OT. If you see any use of these services anywhere on the site, send a message to the person who added it calling them names, and ask an editor to strip the anonymizing service out of the link.
If you see these services used (or worse, forcibly added) on another site, consider asking the site administrator to implement a proper referrer-policy instead of relying on unknown third parties for privacy.
What's the point of an anonymizing service?
When browsers follow a link, they have historically tried to helpfully inform the destination site where the user was referred from to get there. This means if you were on the site "a.com" and clicked a link to "b.com", your browser would inform "b.com" that you came from "a.com".
This has obvious privacy implications. A lot of the time, you don't want a site knowing where you were previously browsing. Doubly so when coming from a torrent or porn site. In response, intermediate link services cropped up that would wrap a url in their own url. This new url would point to the intermediate service's website, which promised to simply redirect you to the destination site. This way, the destination site would see you being referred by the anonymizing service instead of the original site. Use of these services became popular within tracker communities.
A better way
Since then, browsers have implemented the referrer-policy standard, which allows websites to instruct the browser when to send referrers and when not to. Oppaitime, of course, instructs browsers to never send the referrer at all when linked to any site outside of our domain. This alone completely eliminates any reason to use an anonymizing service. Additionally, there are reasons why using an anonymizing service can be bad, and since there's no good reason to use them, it makes sense to ban them completely.
Can they hurt?
For one, anonymizing services tend not to redirect immediately. They make sure to direct you to a branded page informing you about their services, and lingering there a while before sending you on to your real destination. This just slows down your browsing.
More importantly, these anonymizing services usually have no public business model. It's possible that they operate a massive free man-in-the-middle for internet requests out of the goodness of their hearts, but it's more likely that they are the ones tracking you.
As such, nobody should ever use anonymizing services like deferrer.org or anon.to when posting a link on OT. If you see any use of these services anywhere on the site, send a message to the person who added it calling them names, and ask an editor to strip the anonymizing service out of the link.
If you see these services used (or worse, forcibly added) on another site, consider asking the site administrator to implement a proper referrer-policy instead of relying on unknown third parties for privacy.