Can someone explain why I have been seeing an increase in the number of Linking Page URLs in OSE that link directly to downloads?

[Gyi]

Ever since the last couple Linkscape updates when doing competitive back link analysis I have noticed a large increase in the number of URLs of Linking Pages in OSE that result in an immediate file download. The majority of the time these downloads are not common files ie PDF, DOC files.

For example, these were all in a competitors back link profile:

http://download.unesp.br/linux/debian/pool/main/i/isc-dhcp/isc-dhcp-relay-dbg_4.1.1-P1-17_ia64.deb

http://snow.fmi.fi/data/20090210_eurasia_sd_025grid.mat

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/class/me/HTML/ES204_0708_S/working model examples/Le25 mad hatter.wm?a=p&id=145880&g=5&p=sia&date=iso&o=ajgrep

These are just a few I came across for a single competitor. Is this sketchy black hat SEO, some sort of error, actual links, or something else?

Any information on this subject would be helpful.

Thank you.

[KeriMorgret]

This is a known bug in the software. This response from a Linkscape engineer can help explain what's going on. http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-are-our-competitors-getting-these-inbound-linking-domains

[GPJ]

Has the bug been reported somewhere? It would be nice to know the details, such as whether an actual link exists elsewhere on that domain, what causes it to occur, etc.