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From what I've understood it goes beyond that John. It's a way to make an affiliate program pay affiliate fees which the one who profits is not entitled to.
Technically it works by stuffing a cookie on people's browsers which tricks the affiliate program into believing that a sale is made directly via the stuffer's website affiliate link while in reality no affiliate link was touched by the person who got the cookie stuffed on his computer.
It's stealing from the affiliate program owner.
Say I visit a site and get stuffed with a cookie, two weeks later I go to Ebay and buy something for reasons which have nothing whatsoever to do with the stuffer's website I visited two weeks earlier, all I did was reading one article on that site and I did not click any affiliate links. Still Ebay automatically sends a percentage of the sale to the stuffer because Ebay is TRICKED into believing that I came directly from the stuffer's website and clicked an affiliate link.
That's theft in my book John, and it doesn't require to be a rocket scientist to figure out that it's unethical to do.
Just imagine if it was your affiliate program which got conned that way, I don't think you would appreciate it any more than Ebay does.
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