Link Rewriting

Owned by Tyler Horsford (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 06, 2022 by Eli Sanders
3 min read

Summary

INKY’s link rewriting scans URLs in real-time using sophisticated “deep analysis”. Link rewriting is an important tool in keeping your users safe by addressing the problem of dangerous links at the technical level and at the human level. INKY’s link rewriting helps users take the time to better evaluate the situation to highlight potential risks of a site.

Enable Link Rewriting

By default, link rewriting is disabled. To utilize this feature enable the following option under Settings > Markup > Link Rewriting.

To prevent malicious links from being accessed without administrator approval, enable Do Not Allow Users To Continue To A Potentially Dangerous Site. With this option checked, the user will not see a “Proceed To Site” option on the user confirmation page. Only an administrator can permit the URL to be accessed by confirming a safe user report in the INKY Dashboard (see the Exceptions section below for more information).

User Confirmation

INKY administrators have the ability to control what types of messages trigger a user confirmation landing page (as shown below). By default, only messages marked with a red danger banner will redirect the user to the confirmation page. Administrators can choose to enable the confirmation page for only Danger, Danger & Caution, or all messages. The following settings are configurable.

External Mail (Messages not encompassed by a Trusted Third-Party Entry)

  • Always require user confirmation for all links

  • Require user confirmation for Caution and Danger messages and links

  • Require user confirmation for only Danger messages and links (Default)

  • Never require user confirmations, links are still tracked

Trusted 3rd Party/Internal Sender (Messages Matching a Trusted Third-Party or Internal Mail Entry)

  • Always require user confirmation for all links

  • Require user confirmation for Caution and Danger messages and links

  • Require user confirmation for only Danger messages and links (Default)

  • Never require user confirmations, links are still tracked

Exceptions

Link rewriting exceptions will prevent INKY from rewriting the link entirely based on the parameters below. You may create a link rewriting exception using the following parameters:

  • Sending Email Address

  • Sending Email Domain

  • Specific URL (e.g - https://www.inky.com/product/account-takeover-protection )

  • Specific URL Domain or SubDomain (e.g - https://inky.com/, https://test.inky.com)

Adding a specific URL domain will not encompass subdomains (e.g - an exception for INKY.com will not include test.INKY.com). Wildcards are not supported at this time.

Post Delivery Exceptions

When a URL is incorrectly classified as dangerous, administrators can allow that specific link by confirming a “Safe” report. The message with the affected link must be reported by the user by using the “Report This Email” link on the message’s INKY banner.

Additionally, if a URL was incorrectly classified as “Safe”, confirming a message reported as “Phishing” will prevent all users from accessing the exact same URL after the message has been delivered to their inbox.

Administrators can also report the message under the Observations tab in the INKY Dashboard.

If you are experiencing problems with a re-written link you can access the original URL using our decoder.

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