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Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
- 2sf5 2y agoAs someone who has used Honey in the past, while I knew it was taking affiliate commissions in some form or another I had no idea just how insanely deceptive it was. I was completely unaware that it sneakily overrides any existing affiliate codes, AND does this even if it hasn't found any discount whatsoever. It's hard to see this as anything other than fraudulent.
- rconti 2y ago... and also lets stores ensure the end user doesn't get a deal the store doesn't want them to get!
- b_money 2y agoGreat investigative research (wish there was more of this in the news). Kind of insane how they intentionally override existing affiliate codes at checkout even if it doesn't save you money. I switched to Rakuten for cashback and PriceLasso and Keepa for price tracking.
- ImPostingOnHN 2y agoHow do you reckon Rakuten makes money to afford those cashback dollars?
- sgerenser 2y agoI love how the only historical discussion on the topic he found was a HN discussion from 2019 where at least one person was confidently claiming they don’t steal affiliate commissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589273
- xyst 2y ago[flagged]
- bdowling 2y agohttps://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
- eviks 2y agoThat's not the only one, Linus website had the same discussion an the confirmation that it did happen and lead to an end of their partnership
- sgerenser 2y agoYes, true, I should have said the HN thread was “one of the few discussions” not “the only discussion.” HN discussion was much earlier than the LTT one though.
- rconti 2y agohaha yeah, I went back in time and found that same comment from gamblor956 and was thinking "comments that don't age well"
- Kapura 2y agoThis is absolutely wild. In a just society this would be illegal. Why are we just hearing about this now? this is the most rot economy, rent-seeking behaviour imaginable.
- loeg 2y agoIt arguably is illegal, although I'm sure they have a high-powered legal department that will argue it isn't.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoPayPal has deep pockets, making it an ideal civil suit target. There are also 50 state AGs who might be interested in pursuing due to this potentially fraudulent activity.
- piva00 2y agoThe age of leechy middlemen has made me completely cynical about any new app (and most times tech in general). It's wild how quickly online businesses went from exciting to shady and scammy. Feels like 2003-2013 was a golden age for internet services.
- mirsadm 2y agoIt's becoming difficult to trust anything on the internet. It's quite sad.
- synapse42 2y agoThis has me wondering if this could be cause for a class action lawsuit by influencers affiliated with Honey or by Consumers who installed the extension.
- guax 2y agoMy guess any person who shared affiliate links have good grounds for being part in a lawsuit. Not only they did not receive any money from PayPal for promoting Honey they had their affiliates stolen. Honey will likely try to cop out by claiming the affiliate only changes if the user clicks the button and thats intent.
- sgerenser 2y agoI feel like they could maybe argue that when Honey is used and actually applies a coupon and saves the user money. But when they click the “OK” button to dismiss the pop-up that says “sorry, we didn’t find any coupons for you”, there’s absolutely no excuse for stealing the affiliate cookie.
- FateOfNations 2y agoThis is a messy legal situation… For the most part, it looks like consumers weren't directly harmed aside from the false promises about "finding the best deal," but consumers weren't paying anything to Honey for that promise. The harmed parties, the referring affiliates whose links were overwritten, would have to argue that Honey, as a third party, tortiously interfered with them and the merchants paying the affiliate commissions. Third-party claims are challenging, especially when the merchants seem complicit.
- croemer 2y agoShouldn't affiliates sue the merchants for allowing the steal? The merchants surely must notice how often Honey steals the referrals and they benefit likely by laying less in referral fees. So this is collusion by merchant and Honey against the affiliate.
- linvs 2y agoWild. What an incredible investigation.
- matlo 2y agoThis was really wild to watch. Honey is so masterfully crafted to be deceiving. I had it installed years ago, and it intuitively felt like something was scammy, so I uninstalled it. Really incredible work by MegaLag. It seems to be a wholesome trend among creators like Coffeezilla, etc. I hope more of this rot will surface.
- xyst 2y agoI am more impressed by the thoroughness of this IJ report than Honey’s browser extension which just re-writes affiliate cookies. Honey is a parasite stealing from other parasites.
- tommica 2y agoThey're trying to position themselves as Yelp of coupons. They snatch coupons that people use (for example 90% off special coupons meant for specific people, that just happened to have the extension installed), then they have a partner program for companies that allows the partners to control what coupons honey can apply on their site. You don't need to join it, but then your customers get automagically the high value coupons applied, but if you pay them $XX per month, you can limit what gets applied.
- auxbuss 2y agoProper old school investigative journalism, and he didn't hold back. Terrific scam, but, y'know, PayPal – I'm an old timer and remember the early days of that outfit. They're still blocked at the firewall from events 25 years ago. Remember kids: Marketing is a psychopathy.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoOwned by Paypal of course. Lol.
- abdibrokhim 2y ago[flagged]
- the4anoni 2y agoFor me It was somehow obvious "they need to make money on something", and it doesn't surprise me at all that they are inserting own affiliate links. Would I call this scam? No, I wouldn't. Firstly I thought they started to genuinely deploy malware or some crypto-coin miner.
- fabianhjr 2y agoIt is not the only claim in the video. There are at least the following claims: - Inserts its own affiliate link (even when no discount is found, uses strategies to push for interaction like adding a dismiss/pay with paypal link that adds the affiliate association) - Adds a very small kickback from the affiliate payment they receive as a rewards program. (Which, while scraps, makes content creators "lose" in economic terms in the affiliate offerings) - Promises to consumers to find the best discounts available - Promises to vendors to allow control of the discounts offered and the offer rate of said discounts - Previous both promises are contradictory yet simultaneously offered - An extra/upcoming claim around forcing non-affiliated stores to affiliate.
- sgerenser 2y agoIt’s not as big of a scam as deploying malware, but it’s still definitely a scam.
- mandmandam 2y ago> it doesn't surprise me at all that they are inserting own affiliate links. I bet it surprises everyone who had their affiliate links quietly swapped out. > Would I call this scam? No, I wouldn't. Then your definition of 'scam' needs work. While we might expect PayPal's Honey to scam people like this, and be less than surprised that they would screw people over in this way, that doesn't mean this doesn't have every element of a scam - deception and trickery (and likely illegality).
- darthwalsh 2y agoSure, it was a scam, but we weren't the victims. I won't shed a tear for the marketing departments they were defrauding. I do feel bad for the small YouTube channels who lost affiliate revenue, though.
- sss111 2y agoHow would you even build a better version of this geared towards consumers? I don’t see the incentives lining up unless you start charging for the service.
- xyst 2y agoa simple database of coupon codes for each retailer. That’s it. Basically a “Retailmenot” copy. Interestingly, RMN did sue over alleged IP infringement in 2018 [1] [1] https://ia803106.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.ded.65616/gov.uscourts.ded.65616.218.0.pdf https://ia803106.us.archive.org/8/items/gov.uscourts.ded.656...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- delecti 2y agoThe consumer never gets the affiliate cut either way. If there are coupon codes, the consumer wins. If there aren't, the customer only loses a bit of privacy about what they're buying, which most people don't care about anyway.
- meestaahjoshee 2y agohow do you think rakuten cash back works
- delecti 2y agoI have no idea. I'm entirely unfamiliar with that.
- meestaahjoshee 2y agocash back to the user is a cut of the affiliate revenue/commission they get for the sale. this is commonly how all third party ecommerce cash back programs work (honey, klarna, etc.) the video explains how honey has the same thing but the cut they give you seems to be tiny - like less than a dollar to users for a $30 commission for them as one example. i dont know if this is common practice or not but i'm not a user of these extensions personally.
- xyst 2y agoWith more deregulation just beyond the horizon, I wonder how much latitude these companies are going to get with siphoning/stealing from people. It’s amazing IJ from MegaLag, but what’s do we expect going forward? Honey was essentially given a slap on the wrist by a pseudo-regulator, BBB [1] Yet another slap on the wrist with a civil suit? Honey changes their T&C. Lawyers get their massive cut of the class action settlement while individual consumers, “influencers” get a pittance? Nothing ever changes unless C-suite starts going to jail. [1] https://bbbprograms.org/media-center/dd/nad-honey-science-coupon-claims https://bbbprograms.org/media-center/dd/nad-honey-science-co...
- operatingthetan 2y agoI feel like this should be up to the affiliate networks to kick Honey out of their programs for TOS violations right? Or Google removing it from the Chrome store?
- danpalmer 2y agoI would imagine that it’s hard to remove content like that. Is it breaking any T&Cs? Is it illegal? Is it harmful to users? If not it’s hard to draw a line and apply it correctly in such a way that you don’t get sued for things like this. Alternatively, Manifest v3 is supposed to make things like this a lot harder. Users would need to activate the plugin rather than the plugin popping up all the time if I understand it correctly. Manifest v3 was designed to enforce better privacy practices in the Wild West of browser extensions.
- antifa 2y agoI feel like if I did this, I would be charged under the CFAA with at least 5 years prison time.
- tantalor 2y agoAgreed, this feels like fraud
- palmfacehn 2y ago"Cookie Stuffing" Internet Fraud Schemer Pleads Guilty https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdal/pr/cookie-stuffing-internet-fraud-schemer-pleads-guilty-0 https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdal/pr/cookie-stuffing-interne...
- winwang 2y agoThank you, this is incredibly relevant!
- jacksnipe 2y agoYes well people get upset when antifa does anything
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Dotnaught 2y agoConcerns about Honey were raised four years ago by Wladimir Palant: https://palant.info/2020/10/28/what-would-you-risk-for-free-honey/ https://palant.info/2020/10/28/what-would-you-risk-for-free-...
- sgerenser 2y agoThese are pretty serious privacy concerns, and underscores why the Honey extension is bad for users. However, I'd say these concerns are almost orthogonal from those raised in the original article, which listed concerns mostly to the other side of the transaction (the retailers, marketers, and YouTube influencers). So basically, it's just garbage from every direction.
- Rapzid 2y agoThat's wild. So they just take the affiliate commission for everything when installed? A lot of people purchase things through affiliate links to knowingly support the affiliate.. But if they have Honey installed it just "steals" the referral..
- Spivak 2y agoI don't work in this space but how is this not literally bright line can be proven by anyone with the extension affiliate fraud?
- meestaahjoshee 2y agonot sure if that's correct - i think the user has to click on something in the honey popup for them to overwrite the affiliate cookie. outright stealing everything would be too brazen and would probably get noticed by competing programs like rakuten. however they insert themselves in the checkout page and offer measly honey points in the form of cash back as a cut of the commission they'd get. there are stand down rules in the affiliate marketing space where you're not supposed to show your popup if someone has already claimed attribution of a purchase but i've heard many extensions don't follow these well.
- olliej 2y agoThis is basically the same scam the Brave does
- croemer 2y agoWhat does Brave do?
- allenwhsu 2y agoWould love to see someone make a video about Brave if Brave is doing the same thing.
- imslavko 2y agoI am a heavy user of Brave and I would love for you to expand on what you mean. For those curious, here is the open-code repo of all Chromium changes Brave applies. I have not read every commit myself, so any flagging would be appreciated: https://github.com/brave/brave-core https://github.com/brave/brave-core
- Crestwave 2y agoBrave used to insert their affiliate parameters by default when visiting websites. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027 You may also be interested in these topics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-br... They've made good changes after community backlash but their core business model is mostly middle-man stuff with a splash of crypto on top. Firefox's is the Google search engine deal. Pick your poison, I guess.
- li_ion 2y agoThe premise of “trust me; I’ll find you the best coupon codes for that product; don’t look yourself” always rubbed me the wrong way. Sad to hear what they’ve done to the people who trusted them.
- Spivak 2y agoI mean, some rando's hobby project on github would pre pretty trustworthy in this space because the incentives are aligned. The dev and the contributors have no financial stake except as users who want to pay less for stuff. The moment it becomes a business that needs to make money it (predictably) falls apart. uBO vs ABP.
- arielcostas 2y agoI'd say a better example of an extension where the dev and users' interest are aligned is SponsorBlock: people can contribute by sending sponsor segments, and the extension then skips those parts of the video for everyone. You can upvote or downvote others' segments, and that's it. Replace "video" by "ecommerce site", and "sponsor segment" by "coupon" and that's what an extension like Honey should be.
- magic_smoke_ee 2y agoIn 1996, IBM's AIX with the web browser packages installed (NCSA Mosaic or Netscape, I can't recall which) silently sent telemetry back to their mothership without any clear notice or opt-out mechanism. They just sent data back home every few hours without telling their customers what they were up to. I discovered this because it was constantly keeping an ISDN router dialing at all hours, racking up telco bills for a dial-on-demand connection. Fixed by deny listing that particular IP to be un-routable.
- cush 2y agoInsane. This is just regular old theft. No different than an extension that mines bitcoin.
- hnfan10 2y agoThese browser extensions/add-ons with shady monetization tactics have been around since the 90s. The fact that honey in particular has been around for so long and promoted by popular influencers just proves that there are behind the scenes negotiations taking place that is preventing them from being criminally prosecuted much less immediately banned from these affiliate programs.
- muzzgg 2y agois there not an opensource alternative? i mean its webscraping which is very established surely it exists. anyways we should bring them traction if they too arent evil
- arielcostas 2y agoI'm down to contributing to such a project. But there wouldn't even be a need for scraping, just crowdsourcing: people can submit coupons on checkout (perhaps try to detect if they are using one, at least on popular sites) and be offered to share them. Once shared, they are presented to other users, who can try and validate them, or indicate they don't work (for single-use coupons or expired promotions). "Bad" coupons get removed, good coupons keep getting presented to users.
- bdavbdav 2y agoI don’t know what the (country) equivalent is, but the UK has HUKD - they need an extension.
- jren207 2y agoThere wouldn't be an extension because it wouldn't make money. This is the whole reason behind how Honey works. Honey is using its existence as an extension to steal commission, and partnering with retailers to suppress certain higher value coupons. HUKD has adverts on its website as one of its means of making money. Something which obviously you couldn't do via an extension or users wouldn't install it.
- timshel4 2y agoAs an ex-employee, the overriding affiliate links and setting fix discount rates with merchants is sad to see. The original mission was always to help customers make more informed purchases and save money. Seems like a lot of that was lost post-acquisition, and instead of innovating on the core mission of saving money, they just doubled down on exploiting first click affiliate monetization. They should only make money if customers save money and partner with affiliates but instead they hopped on the gravy train.
- windmark 2y agoWhat was the original business model that Honey had? I only know of the current Honey approach, inserting themselves into the checkout page, did Honey work differently before? More like a coupon search engine? That’s the only way I can imagine “first click” makes sense.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mkbkn 2y agoAt this moment, Honey addon is still in Firefox and Chrome's catalog. Have reported them at both places and gave 1-star as well.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mrmemind 2y agoIt seems like honey has their claws in almost everything. Correct me if I'm wrong, but would this make affiliate marketing a waste of time for the rest of us?
- ilikeboobs 2y agoIt's called cookie stuffing, and it constitutes wire fraud.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- birudeghi 2y agoA very timely news for something I've been working on lately. It goes without saying that there's conflict of interest, but the interesting bit is such conflict arises because of crude thinking from the execs about what makes discount code works. Discounts is a form of marketing, simple as that. If your company sells products at a discount, it means that you're spending extra marketing cost to sell higher volumes. Anyone in the middle distributing this discount information will charge extra for their service. Anyone competing to charge companies for marketing can only meaningfully compete on cost and reach. In terms of cost, most discount code websites tend to only give small discounts to consumers as the 'sales' cost is internalised in other forms, e.g. commission, so only a fraction gets passed on to them. At the end of the day, these kinds of businesses will fight to find any margins possible, however small, to keep the company afloat because competition will erode these margins away through price reductions to these companies. This is why Honey is the way it is now, because the incentives forces them to do so. It is harmful to end consumers as they have no $$ on the table to influence this large incentives. Honey doesn't have to do this, but they think they do probably because most companies around them are doing the same, so why not? But there's examples (like x.com) to show that you CAN charge consumers directly, and they'll pay handsomely if your product is good enough. That's why I'm starting Pence (https://pence.so https://pence.so), where I charge consumers directly for giving them better deals. I don't charge merchants because of long-term incentive alignment for end consumers. The supply of deals comes from marketing emails that you and I receive, and these companies are sending them for almost nothing as email is a free protocol. Feel free to challenge me, as there's obvious concerns I've anticipated for my product, but I think it's one valid way to think about this issue differently.
- MiguelX413 2y agoIs there a plugin I can use to remove affiliate links altogether for privacy purposes?
- yapyap 2y agojust goes to show again how LTT and LMG are scummy people
- fabiomoy18 2y ago[dead]