Ooh, thank you. I get they need to make money, but I hate this. It also won’t seem to turn off for me, I disabled the setting for direct match, deleted all my cookies and such, deleted the browser cache, and it’s still popping up and still redirecting through the affiliate link. Boo.
I’ve been able to replicate with DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and Ecosia. Interestingly enough while testing it out to see if that was the issue I’ve noticed that it isn’t happening every time, more like every other time. It redirects so fast it’s easy to miss, but I was able to screen record and grab a screenshot of the link it’s redirecting through. It’s the same regardless of search engine.
Report it to who? Vivaldi?
Vivaldi concerns me a little, because I keep catching them trying to replace web addresses for major retailers with what appear to be affiliate links. For example, if I start typing the address for Amazon (I know, shitty company, but it’s the first page that comes to mind) it will pop up an auto complete to click on. If I click it, I can see that I’m redirected to Amazon through what appears to be either an affiliate or a tracking link. However, if I type the address fully in the browser and don’t use auto complete it takes me straight to Amazon, no redirecting or strange links popping up first. They do not disclose that they are doing this anywhere that I have found and I think it’s shady as fuck. I don’t have any extensions installed and it happens on multiple devices (phone, laptop, PC) and only on Vivaldi, so it’s definitely the browser and not an untrustworthy extension or a compromised device.
This. I use FOSS apps for as much as possible, have all my privacy settings carefully curated, don’t use Gmail or other Google apps for anything that matters, and have everything related to AI, social media apps, or services I don’t use disabled in the system apps, plus I use Mullvad’s DNS server to block ads and social media traffic from my phone itself, not just browsers. I work a lot of hours and don’t get much time to just chill. While I’m more tech savvy than the average person I’m far less tech savvy than the average Lemmy user. I don’t want to spend what little free time I have trying to install a different OS on my phone hoping I don’t brick it, or figuring out if I can get things to work with my phone carrier, my work apps, or my banking apps, and the convenience of having those apps outweighs the cons.
I did delete the bookmarks, yes. I’ll have to keep playing with it and see if I can make it stop, but it does make me feel a little better knowing what it is. I just wish they were more open and transparent about it. Seeing my browser just randomly redirecting me through third party links with no warning is alarming and makes me want to go find another browser and I’ve gone through like 6 in the last 2 years trying to find one I like.