Option UnsafeRedirectUnknown

 Caution: OCLC recommends that you do NOT use this directive.

Option UnsafeRedirectUnknown specifies that the unrecommended behavior originally provided by Option RedirectUnknown should be enabled.

Prior to EZproxy 5.1c, Option RedirectUnknown provided a method to direct EZproxy to accept any Starting Point URL, including those that targeted web sites that were not configured for proxying. The intended purpose of this option was to allow EZproxy to be targeted both for licensed content and free content, allowing sites to route all outgoing links through EZproxy without considering whether or not the links required proxying.

Unfortunately, “phishing sites” become aware of this behavior and started generating their own Starting Point URLs that pointed back to their own servers. Such URLs appeared to be affiliated with respectable institutions, misleading people into following them through to these unexpected sites.

To prevent this behavior, Option RedirectUnknown was disabled in EZproxy5.1c and a new directive was introduced called RedirectSafe. The RedirectSafe directive can be used to identify web sites that do not need to be proxied, but which should be allowed as targets of Starting Point URLs.

When upgrading from an older release of EZproxy that uses Option RedirectUnknown to a newer release, the recommended strategy is to use RedirectSafe. If this restriction is not detected until the upgrade has occurred, Option UnsafeRedirectUnknown can be used to enable the original behavior while consideration is given to how to use RedirectSafe.

Option UnsafeRedirectUnknown

Option UnsafeRedirectUnknown