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Cookie stuffing is a deceptive tactic in affiliate marketing. In affiliate marketing, individuals (affiliates) are compensated for enticing consumers to buy products through specially crafted URL that set HTTP cookie on users' Web browser to track which affiliate referred the user to the site. Affiliates engaging in cookie stuffing use invasive techniques, like , to falsely claim credit for sales that they did not facilitate.
Many affiliate marketing programs prohibit cookie stuffing, considering it fraudulent. 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. However, despite occasional high-profile cases, researchers in 2015 found that cookie stuffing remains rare and most users do not encounter it frequently.
Cookie stuffing works by tricking the browser into setting this cookie without the user clicking an affiliate link. Cookie stuffing can be done by embedding web pages in other web pages or via ads that open in separate windows without the user's knowledge. Later, if the user happens to purchase a product on that retailer's website, the retailer will pay a commission for the sale due to the presence of the cookie, even though the affiliate did not drive a sale.
In the same study, Chachra et al. found that over 84% of cookies set by fraudulent marketers employed HTTP referer obfuscation to hide their activities from retail websites. The referrer header is a HTTP header set by the browser that is often used by affiliates to determine the legitimacy of requests from affiliate marketing websites. Fraudulent marketers would set up websites referencing an image or a JavaScript file from an innocuous-looking domain. This domain would then redirect to multiple other domains before arriving at the destination affiliate website. By redirecting the user through several innocuous-looking domains, the fraudulent marketer can trick the browser into setting the wrong website in the referrer header of the request being made to the affiliate website, making it harder for the affiliate marketing firm to track down the source of the request.
Another technique used by some malicious entities includes hijacking or publishing malicious browser extensions on the Google Chrome and Firefox extension stores. By modifying requests sent to online retailers and setting cookies or redirecting users to affiliate websites on startup, the malicious extension can trick online marketers into thinking that the user legitimately clicked on an affiliate link to navigate to their marketplace.
In certain cases in the United States, cookie stuffing has been considered a form of wire fraud. In 2006, when eBay collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a sting operation targeting top affiliate marketers, Shawn Hogan, eBay's largest affiliate marketer, was found to have engaged in cookie stuffing. His strategy involved modifying his website to load resources from eBay's servers, thereby setting affiliate cookies on users' browsers. The technique falsely attributed subsequent eBay purchases to Hogan's site. Despite Hogan making over $28 million through eBay's affiliate commissions, it was determined that Hogan's activities did not contribute any substantial revenue to eBay. 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.
Around the same time, another incident involved eBay's second-most-prolific affiliate marketer, Brian Dunning, who employed similar tactics to defraud eBay of over $5 million during 2006–2007. Dunning's fraudulent activities came to light as he utilized methods akin to Shawn Hogan's cookie-stuffing scheme. During the legal proceedings, Dunning admitted to collaborating with Hogan in executing the fraud, offering to teach him key techniques. Hogan denied the claim, alleging that Dunning ripped off his techniques. Dunning further alleged that he paid an account manager at an affiliate management network , for insider knowledge of how the affiliate network operated, although this claim was not officially confirmed. 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.
Cookie stuffing has adverse effects on both end users and legitimate affiliates. For end users, a loss of revenue for the parent online retail company in the form of fraudulent affiliate commission payouts could result in items that would otherwise have been sold at a discount being listed at higher prices to offset the losses incurred by online marketers. Similarly, a decrease in the amount of traffic for an online marketing firm could lead to lower demand and, subsequently, higher prices for items. Legitimate affiliates, who employ advertising to attract consumers, suffer from the impact of cookie stuffing, as they lose out on conversions from affiliate sales that were manipulated as a result of cookie stuffing which overrides legitimate affiliate cookies.
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