How to prevent cookie stuffing actions. A common sense approach.

In black hat cookie stuffing activities, there are three subjects hurt. In the first place comes the merchant which is paying wrong commissions to the person that deploy the illegal cookie. Sometimes the percent of non legitimate commission rice to more than 34% of the total commissions paid.

In second place comes the Affiliate Network, which build interrelations between affiliates and merchants. Cookie stuffing is a huge problem for the network. The affiliate network is the one responsible to recruit and approve those affiliates that will promote the product or service of the merchant.

If the network approves and signs into the merchant affiliate program black hat affiliates that deploy unrequested cookies then the merchant will lose money. From the occupations of this cookie stuffers, the merchant will pay an average of 20% percent of total commissions to affiliates that committed fraud. This will damage the credibility of the affiliate network in a huge manner. It is common to find articles in the web saying affiliate networks profit from affiliate cookie stuffing. The truth is, they might benefit at initial states, but when this felony is discovered they suffer in their reliability. And credibility is a major asset in this type of business.

When a cookie stuffing attack is discovered the merchant blame the affiliate network about its deficiency of controls, overpaying commissions, and in most cases the relation ends. Is a fact that the networks must screen and approve affiliates, but also improve codes and scripts in order to prevent cookie stuffing activities.

The other part that suffers from these activities is the white hat affiliate who promotes the merchant services using the affiliate network platform. In direct relation normal affiliates lose commissions when black hat affiliates steal their cookies or position cookies in their websites or forums. The last ones, the forums, are bombarded daily with deceitful affiliates placing codes to set unsolicited cookies. When this happened the loyal affiliate finds out that his commissions are declining without apparent reason. As time pass without knowing that a cookie stuffing code was inserted in his site (blog or forum), he will change to another affiliate program or look for better paying advertising. The problem arose when he discovers the cookie stuffing code. Then he demands answers from the affiliate network.

Two things will happen here, or the affiliate report this occurrence to the affiliate network, or start to explore to find more about cookie stuffing, and eventually joined the black hat crowd. In both cases is the affiliate network that looses.

Second comes social sites like open blogs (blogger, word press, live journal) and community sites (Myspace, bebo, Facebook) where anyone can sign, upload content and cookie stuff. The usual way to cookie stuff these sites are with image and flash base cookies stuffing scripts.

On average the reaction of the white hat affiliate, affiliate network and merchant are too late. They find out what happened when commissions decreased (affiliate side), traffic and commissions rise (affiliate network) or when commissions paid are too high without normal reasons (merchants).

Well then. How can cookie stuffing be prevented?
What can the white hat affiliate, the affiliate network and the merchant do about it?

They must open their eyes and learn that there are easy solutions to the cookie stuffing problems. In fact, they must know the new techniques cookies stuffers are using to earn money. Affiliate networks could use the same techniques cookies stuffers are using to prevent this activity and make these fraudulent methods useless.

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