[QUESTION] Possibility of Hacked Backlinks

Hi everyone, today I checked backlinks from one of my competitor's website, about 10% of the backlinks are coming from the websites that look like someone else business site that quite informative and real (with their company logo, event pictures and address), obviously not own by my competitor.

All of the backlinks are put beside their business link. For example :

[picture]
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[website Facebook links][competitor's backlink] - (anchor text is not related to the article)

For me, they are not PBN.

Do you think he can hacked websites and put his link inside the articles that owned by some else?

My competitor currently rank no.1 on google, just want to know if it is possible.

Thank you.

Well, I know its possible to purchase backlinks off sape which some of them are hacked.

it might be from sape

sape is a chance to get that .....

yep could be SAPE but, i have seen cases where it looks like a blatent hack where they have added a page to the website and added a contextual URL.

e.g.

thelittlebakery.com/hostgator-coupon-codes/

With a 500 word article about hostgator and a link in there.

Not sure if they are directly hacking or this is some sort of SAPE service

These are hacks, some of those shady webhosts will easily do it for you.