PSA: LJ skirts privacy, diverts outbound links

[scarlettina]

The story and a link to the solution can be found here, laced with tasty epithets.

Short version: Whenever you put a link in your LJ that goes to some e-commerce site (apparently about 150 are affected), Live Journal is redirecting those links through a third-party site. What this means, among other things, is that if you're linking to an e-commerce site from LJ with the hope of earning affiliate dollars, you'll lose them. Also, this third-party site doesn't always get the redirects right.

This doesn't affect me quite so much as it does others I know, which is the reason I'm posting this information here. I find it irritating and intrusive. I hope this info is of use to others.

Comments

[ironymaiden]

thanks for the console thing, done. i've been squatting at dreamwidth for a while now, probably time to poke around a bit more.

looks like kylecassidy is on it, and complaints have been made to Amazon. that's the one that i'm waiting to see blow up.

[ironymaiden]

changes being made.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

Why do I have the feeling that Our Russian Overlords have less knowledge of how the internet works than Canter and Siegel did? In C&S's case it was just greed and stupidity, but LJ's current owners do seem to be trying to rework a good idea into a Bathyscape.