referrer

• 

  lesliepatten · Member · Dec 17, 2014 at 3:49 am

  • Copy link
  • Add topic to favorites

  what does l.facebook.com as a referrer mean. I get referrals from Facebook as well as l.facebook.com and wonder where those come from.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

• 

  gracejiyoung · Member · Dec 17, 2014 at 6:49 pm

  • Copy link

  Hi Lesile,

  Facebook made a change in which they migrated their link shim traffic off of www. to l.facebook.com so that it could be non-https for browsers that don’t support meta referrers to manage referrers.

  So, this means that l.facebook.com corresponds to http://www.facebook.com and lm.facebook.com corresponds to m.facebook.com (mobile Facebook).

  So what is link shim?

  The web is full of spam sites and Facebook works to fight this via the link shim. When you click on a link in Facebook, the link shim checks the URL against a regularly updated list of malicious sites. If one is detected, the shim will display an interim page that is designed to protect or warn people visiting the site. The link shim address is also used to protect any personal identifying information from 3rd party sites.

  Hope this helps!