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Skip the interceptor with Greasemonkey


Frequent visitors to the official WoW forums will no doubt be familiar with the Forum Interceptor that Blizzard has in place for your "protection." Briefly, any time you click a link in a forum thread that doesn't lead to a Blizzard-owned domain, a bit of JavaScript loads an Interceptor page that tells you to be wary of keyloggers and things, and that the internet is a dangerous place. Possibly useful to people under the age of ten; otherwise, it gets old fast.

Fortunately, there are ways around it. Opening a link in a new tab (middle-click) works in most browsers. But what if you don't want to think about it all the time? Shouldn't links in the forums work just like links everywhere else on the freaking internet? Yes, they should. And that's why we have Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox plug-in that lets users install userscripts that do things to websites. If that sounds vague, it is; userscripts can perform all sorts of tricks. The script we're interested in, called Shelter from a Blizzard, does precisely one thing: makes links on the WoW forums point directly to their destinations, skipping the interceptor page.

If you're running Firefox, and want this magic in your very own browser, here's what you do:

  1. Install Greasemonkey, if you don't already have it. Once you're done installing, restart your browser.

  2. Go to Shelter from a Blizzard's page, and click the "Install This Script" button at the right.

  3. That's it! From now on all WoW forum pages you load will be de-intercepted.