What LJ's doing, and how to opt out of it

[badseed1980]

Reposting from roy_batty:

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LiveJournal has started snooping on outbound clicks, sliently redirecting outbound links through "outboundlink.net." This is enabled even for paid users, and the opt-out is so hidden/out of the way that what they're doing is simply unconscionable.

Here's an example link: http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols-Algorithms-Source/dp/0471117099/
Javascript is used to make the url in the status bar appear normal when you hover over it, until you actually click on the link. To see that it is actually being redirected for tracking, right-click on the link and copy the url, then paste it into something like notepad.

Fortunately, there is a way to opt out:
Open the Admin Console at http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/
Execute the following command: set opt_exclude_stats 1

I also recommend adding the following to your ad-blocker:
outboundlink.net
l-stat.livejournal.com/js/pagestats/dRev.js
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I'd seen the news that this was happening, but this was the first time I saw the opt-out command. Sweet.

Comments

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

OK, could you connect the dots for me? I'm not sure what the deal is with outbound links. I'm sure there's something wrong here, but I'm not quite getting it.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Here (http://vichan.livejournal.com/392527.html) is a pretty good summary of the issue.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Ahh, okay. Yeah, that's problem, and not simply because of a head-in-ass technical screw-up, but a judgment call (third-party sites to drive revenue that tracks our clicks?) screw-up on top of it. Things were not properly thought out and tested before implementation, and surprise! People noticed and are not happy.

Thanks for the info! Now to go opt-out.

[miss-lisa-ma.livejournal.com]

Fie, I say.

[leenah.livejournal.com]

tks for the heads up.

[pir.livejournal.com]

They're turning it off in the next code push, apparently.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Good to hear.

[cos]

Seems not to be doing it for me. I never disabled it, but all links I see on LJ are direct, without redirection.