Attacks from affiliate fraud like cookie stuffing may seem relatively harmless to retailers used to the pain of credit card fraud. Since they can never result in chargebacks and the fraudster can never take more money than the merchant would have received from a legal commission, they are not a threat to the system. The risk associated with cookie stuffing is how it undermines affiliate programs, a big source of income for many publishers and a significant lead generator for merchants.

In an interview, Faisal Abidi discouraged merchants and publishers from participating when fraudsters misuse the trust that affiliate programs rely on. Publishers feel they aren’t being recognized or paid for their promotional efforts, while retailers find themselves paying out a lot more commissions without experiencing a corresponding rise in sales.

How Are Fraudsters Using The Cookies?

You must understand “cookie stuffing” and the typical methods for applying it as a publisher. Publishers are tricked into installing dangerous extensions and integrating suspicious programs, just like users are. Once you know the potential entry points for cookies, you can lock them.

• Pop-ups

Pop-ups are not brand-new. Most websites on the internet utilize pop-up windows to attract subscriptions and consumers and promote specials, among other things. However, pop-ups are now frequently used to deposit cookies on users’ browsers. Please ensure no anonymous affiliate cookies are dropped before adding a third-party pop-up extension to your CMS or using their scripts on your pages.

• Iframes

Iframes are used to insert an individual HTML file inside another HTML file. For instance, a page-level advertisement. Some suppliers request that you include an iframe, which can load affiliate URLs and write cookies to browsers inside your web pages. Most iframes used for advertisements may be read easily. The relevant parameters, library file URLs, etc., are visible. So, before adding the code to your pages, Phonato Studio suggests you review your respective regulations.

• JavaScript

To forcefully reroute your visitors to any website and then write affiliate cookies, a merchant can utilize javascript. Although it is one of the apparent problems with programmatic, there are techniques to avoid such redirection.

• Stylesheets

CSS can also render an affiliate URL on the pages as an image. When generating the pages, ensure no unknown CSS library calls are being made.

Final Reflections

Cookie stuffing affiliated frauds jeopardize the integrity of your affiliate marketing program since it forces you to spend money on dishonest partners while forgoing the chance to fund reputable affiliates that provide quality traffic.

Furthermore, this approach can direct bots, false users, and other types of invalid traffic to your website due to the fraudulent nature of cookie stuffing and the enormous amount of non-human traffic on the internet. It was explained by RNF Technologies how these could invade your affiliate channels, skew your data, analytics, and KPI measurements, and give you a false impression of how well your marketing and business are performing.

Hence, it is essential to beware of types of fraud and do thorough research to prevent your business from indulging in the wrong methods.