What does the referral link /away.php mean on Vkontakte?

Question

Marketing

When analyzing traffic sources from Vkontakte, Google Analytics issues the following types of referral links:

• /away.php
  
• /im
  
• /feed
  
• /groupname
  
• other
  

/im - this is a transition from private messages
/feed - a transition from the news feed
/grouname - a transition from the group wall
What does /away.php mean? They say that Vkontakte passes all external links through this url. But then how are transitions from personal messages and from feeds formed, if people there also follow external links?

Answer 1

away.php - script through which VKontakte proxies external links.
When you see a VKontakte link, it does not lead to example.com, but to away.php, which will issue a warning that this is an external link, that it is not related to the VKontakte site. Further from this page, you can already go to the target site (some links are blocked by VKontakte and away.php simply says that this is a malicious link).