linksallow

Linksallow is a term used in discussions of web content governance to describe a policy-based approach to managing hyperlinks within digital content. It may refer to a policy language, a software library, or a set of patterns for enforcing which links are permissible in a document or application. The central idea is to allow authors or administrators to declare allowed destinations and enforce those rules during content rendering or ingestion.

Policy specification can include allowed domains, URI schemes, path patterns, and contextual conditions such as user role, content type, or provenance. A policy engine evaluates each hyperlink as the content is displayed or processed; disallowed links can be blocked, rewritten to a warning, proxied through a trusted gateway, or otherwise handled to preserve user safety and branding.

Implementations are typically embedded in content management systems, intranets, email clients, or browser extensions. They range from lightweight libraries that perform runtime checks to server-side modules that sanitize or rewrite content before delivery. Common architectural components include a policy store, an evaluator, a link transformer, and reporting/analytics for policy violations.

Use cases include reducing phishing risk, enforcing corporate or editorial linking guidelines, protecting brand integrity, and improving accessibility by avoiding broken or unsafe destinations. Critics note potential maintenance burden, performance overhead, false positives, and friction for legitimate external links.

Although often described in security and content moderation literature, there is no single universal standard named “linksallow.” The term is used to describe a family of approaches that share the aim of controlling hyperlink navigation.

See also: Content Security Policy, URL filtering, whitelist/blacklist approaches, link safety, browser extensions.