Another Livejournal Fail

[pegkerr]

Read this. vichan says:

LiveJournal has done something stupid again.

Let me rephrase that: LiveJournal has done something REALLY f*ing stupid.

Links to about 150 e-commerce sites that users post to their LiveJournals are being redirected through a 3rd party website. These redirected links also open in a new window.

Among other things, this redirection strips any existing affiliate links and inserts a different affiliate link.

I first heard about this from my sister. At first, I wasn't having the problem she was talking about, but I poked around some more and finally figured out how to get it to happen on my end. If I click on this link: GlutenFreeBay.com (a website containing gluten free recipes) while logged out of LiveJournal, the link pops up in a new window and doesn't appear to be gluten free recipes at all. Instead, it takes me to eBay.

These links are being directed through something called "outboundclick.net." From what people have been able to deduce, this redirection is triggered by certain keywords in the URL such as "buy" and "free."

This is a huge, huge problem, LJ. It's sneaky, it's dishonest, and it's a violation of our privacy.

Why else is this a problem? It is potentially stealing revenue from LJ users.

I don't have the tech knowledge to evaluate this first hand, but it sounds bad. Read more here, with links with further information and information on how to use the admin console to opt out.

Update: jimhines says: See Kyle Cassidy's update at http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/585577.html

Sounds like LJ is pulling the code, if they haven't done so already.