Affiliates engaging in cookie stuffing use invasive techniques, like pop-up ads, to falsely claim credit for sales that they did not facilitate.
It causes retail companies to lose revenue, potentially leading to higher prices for consumers and lost sales for legitimate affiliates.
In 2014, Shawn Hogan, a prominent figure in eBay's affiliate program was convicted of wire fraud for engaging in cookie stuffing and received a five-month long federal prison sentence along with a $25,000 fine.
[1] However, despite occasional high-profile cases, researchers in 2015 found that cookie stuffing remains rare and most users do not encounter it frequently.
Affiliate marketing is a strategy employed by online retailers like GoDaddy, Amazon, and eBay to amplify website traffic.
Later, if the user continues with a purchase from the retailer, the merchant reads this cookie to identify which affiliate will receive a commission for the sale.
[3][11] In the same study, Chachra et al. found that over 84% of cookies set by fraudulent marketers employed referrer obfuscation to hide their activities from retail websites.
[18] His strategy involved modifying his website to load resources from eBay's servers, thereby setting affiliate cookies on users' browsers.
[19] In subsequent legal proceedings, Hogan pleaded guilty to a single wire fraud charge, leading to a five-month federal prison sentence and a $25,000 fine.
[21] Dunning, like Hogan, pleaded guilty to a single wire fraud charge and was sentenced to 15 months in prison, followed by three years of supervision.
Similarly, a decrease in the amount of traffic for an online marketing firm could lead to lower demand and, subsequently, higher prices for items.