Re:PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for...
by 55555 on Thursday November 21, 2019 @04:09AM
(#21592504)
Sure, you can note that, and that's helpful, but other than in the strict legal sense, many coupon code sites do engage in other forms of coupon stuffing. For example, many display fake coupons which don't exist or which they know are expired, and which you must click to reveal. Upon clicking, the target site opens in a new window, and a cookie is dropped. The user was already buying the product anyway, and perhaps another affiliate was set to get the referral commission, but now this accidental popup has stolen it for the coupon site, and there's no coupon to be found. No value delivered for merchant or customer, but the coupon site makes money.
There's a lot of forms of cookie stuffing that are legal, or at least grey, and still seem to me like cookie stuffing, even though they aren't standard, clear-cut, illegal cookie stuffing fraud.
Re:PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for...
by mmanfrin on Thursday November 21, 2019 @12:40PM
(#21596919)
That's not cookie stuffing, that's just being deceptive. Cookie stuffing doesnt just mean sending a user to an affiliate link, it means specifically loading unrelated sites, usually in the background (or used with js/flash). I'm noting it because you're using the wrong term.
It should be noted that cookie stuffing is a term for a specific process where a site will inject cookies for thousands of sites with their own referral code on pageload of a landing site they control. It is highly illegal and people have served jail time for it, as it is considered fraud.
What coupon sites do is they tend to hide codes behind a button that onclick will load the retailer's site with their affiliate code, then show the code.