What happened to my link, it was changed

In the thread Home network (possibly fiber) - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board, I posted a link to a example of a solution that the OP was asking for, the link I had was:

Also this should be the same:

It was transformed to:

What happened, how/why did this change?

It even came up initially correctly then seemed to change on a revisit several minutes later.

Several recent threads:

Just to say that when I went to the thread you posted in, it seems you have posted a link to a place called macmall dot com, neither Amazon nor Office Depot.

OK thanks, that was the answer :frowning:

You mean you posted the wrong link in the first place?

Then where did the Office Depot link come from?

It’s the same product each time, it appears from my quick browsing the above links that the message board somehow uses this viglink ‘service’ which appears to change links to other sellers, using the link below to opt out appeared to correct it and restore the original link

Interesting that you had a mac link, do you use a apple computer?

I posted the link I wanted to, the Amazon one (correctly), then on a revisit I saw the office depot one, had no idea how that got there until I read the links above posted by Turek.

I went to the thread, allowed viglink(I use Noscript) and watched the link change to Office Depot.

I resent the insinuation that I am a Mac user! :smiley:

Anyway, I had a Vigilink problem a couple of years ago, which mainly manifested as making random words (but quite often iphone or Mac related ones) into links. It possibly changed my home page and I don’ recall what else.
I had a hard time removing it (following instructions on various tech help forums).

I even started a thread about it here.

That is freaky, and just plain wrong. I use uBlock, which blocks viglink as well; when I disabled it (allowing viglink’s javascript to run) and refreshed, I too watched the links on the page magically change. IfI quoted the OP’s post, it showed the original Amazon URL, but when the post was rendered on the page, the hyperlink was changed.

That’s just all kinds of messed up. On a site where editing another poster’s words in a quote is expressly forbidden, we have an ad provider making wholesale replacement of user content as the page is being rendered.

Not cool.