LiveJournal Accused Of Redirecting Links, Swiping Affiliate Fees
techdirt.com
·
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:27
[Source - Techdirt.]
You may or may not remember, many years ago, that one of the "tricks" used by adware was to hijack affiliate fees. Basically, the way it would work is that the adware would watch where you were clicking, and if the URL was for an online store that had an affiliate program or affiliate link, the adware would swap in its own adware account info, allowing the adware company to collect the affiliate fees rather than the company/individual who actually earned it. Sneaky.
However, now there are some claims that popular blog/community site LiveJournal is doing the same thing itself. Shawn Tutt points us to a story claiming that LiveJournal is redirecting outbound links from users such that they appear to strip any affiliate codes and add LiveJournal's own affiliate codes to a long list of... [View Full Article]
You may or may not remember, many years ago, that one of the "tricks" used by adware was to hijack affiliate fees. Basically, the way it would work is that the adware would watch where you were clicking, and if the URL was for an online store that had an affiliate program or affiliate link, the adware would swap in its own adware account info, allowing the adware company to collect the affiliate fees rather than the company/individual who actually earned it. Sneaky.
However, now there are some claims that popular blog/community site LiveJournal is doing the same thing itself. Shawn Tutt points us to a story claiming that LiveJournal is redirecting outbound links from users such that they appear to strip any affiliate codes and add LiveJournal's own affiliate codes to a long list of... [View Full Article]