4 ms·
I can think of two evil uses for this: #1: If you're an author who also runs a blog, you can make Amazon "recommend" your book to your visitors. #2: The Amaz
by phillco 15y ago
I can think of two evil uses for this:
#1: If you're an author who also runs a blog, you can make Amazon "recommend" your book to your visitors.
#2: The Amazon referral tag is included in the iframe. If I recall right, once you visit an Amazon page with such a tag, that gets set for your entire session and the referrer gets credit for everything you buy. This means if I embed this my website, and you visit, I will get a cut of all your Amazon purchases. Automatically.
(As stated below this will probably get you banned before you can receive payment, sadly)
- chc 15y agoIt also means your Amazon affiliate account will get banned in short order, I think. I'm pretty sure they enforce the TOS on this issue. (Obviously I haven't tried my own luck.)
- yajoe 15y agoRegarding #2 and the affiliate/associates program: Without going into specifics this is generally prevented. For example, pages viewed from iframes include referrer headers and most web browsers will report screen dimensions, etc. You can tell when content was loaded in the background and doesn't match with the subsequent purchase behavior. Amazon is insanely customer-focused and works hard to ensure everything is fair and above board.
- Steko 15y agoIf Amazon pays a percentage to some website I visited that's really invisible to the customer. Amazon's incentive here is their Karen Carpenter thin margins (too soon? too bad, I'm tired of using razors as the cliche thin metaphor).