How Does Cookie Stuffing Contribute To Affiliate Fraud?

Cookie stuffing is a fraudulent practice where threat actors use third-party cookies to collect commissions. With cookie stuffing, you will have to pay the nefarious affiliates, even though they utilized illegitimate practices. Affiliate marketing is a powerful tool for driving organic leads and traffic.

Unscrupulous affiliates may use loopholes in affiliate marketing to create fraud. Fraud in affiliate marketing can come in various forms. Cookie stuffing can cripple your affiliate marketing campaigns for financial gains.

Threat actors leverage numerous techniques to trick your marketing team into paying them, and cookie stuffing is one of them. When monitored properly, affiliate marketing can be a powerful tool to drive targeted traffic to your website.

But the stuffing of cookies implies that you are paying commissions to nefarious affiliates on bogus sales. Cookie stuffing, commonly referred to as cookie dropping, is when threat actors drop multiple cookies. Companies nowadays are implementing malware solutions to stop the progression of affiliate fraud. Here are some ways in which cookie stuffing can contribute to affiliate fraud. 

Overview of Cookie Stuffing

Cookie stuffing is a deceptive practice where nefarious affiliates drop multiple third-party cookies into the browsers of your customers without their consent. It is a fraudulent technique in affiliate marketing where threat actors claim commissions for conversions or sales they didn’t contribute to. In this type of affiliate fraud, the nefarious affiliates steal credit and commission from the legitimate affiliates of your company.

What are Cookies?

Cookies are an inseparable part of affiliate marketing. Cookies are pieces of information designed to store the data of users. To infiltrate the user’s browser or system, the black hat affiliates use third-party cookies. Through cookie stuffing, unscrupulous affiliates can overwrite an existing cookie via digital platforms.

Your company’s marketing team also relies on cookies to attribute sales to an individual clicking on the affiliate links. Cookies also play a crucial role in optimizing the user experience of your customers. They save essential information like login credentials, credit card details, etc.

Cookie stuffing allows the threat actors to get important information about your customers. Brands are deploying adware protection to monitor their affiliate networks and counter cookie stuffing.

Repercussions of Cookie Stuffing

The main objective of threat actors leveraging cookie stuffing is to gain commission for referring a user to a website. The third-party cookies comprise false information that states that the user was convinced by the black hat affiliate. The repercussions of cookie stuffing are as follows

• The threat actors receive all the money
• The legitimate affiliates start losing all the credit and commissions
• Your customers and visitors are being taken advantage of

Cookie stuffing can also skew your company’s marketing metrics. Your marketing team relies on false insights and inaccurate predictions to optimize the affiliate campaigns.

Common Methods of Cookie Stuffing

The nefarious affiliates use several types of methods to drop third-party cookies onto your user’s devices. Here is the list of standard methods of cookie stuffing among the threat actors.

Insertion of Cookies through Adware

Adware is a type of software platform that helps your marketing team to display ads and pop-ups on a user’s browser. The user has to install the adware so that you can show them relevant ads. It functions by changing the configuration settings of the browser.

The main reason to use adware is for effective promotions. But the threat of cookie stuffing through adware is always high. They use adware to take advantage of the browser settings and add spyware. Most unscrupulous affiliates use adware to inject cookies into the user’s devices. 

iFrames

iFraming, also known as inline framing, is when the affiliate embeds an HTML page inside an existing HTML page. The nefarious affiliates can insert malicious HTML pages into the pre-existing pages. When a user makes a valid purchase from that webpage, the black hat affiliate earns commissions.

JavaScript

The main objective of JavaScript is to make websites appealing and improve their user experience. JavaScript is also responsible for redirecting users to a different webpage. The unscrupulous affiliates take advantage of this time between redirection to drop third-party cookies.

Zero-Pixel Images

The nefarious affiliates insert a zero-pixel image with the affiliate link on the webpage of the advertiser. Customary to their name, the zero-pixel images are invisible to your users. They appear as blank spaces.

When the user clicks on this blank space, the webpage is redirected to a product page with the affiliate cookies. Whenever the user makes a valid purchase, the nefarious affiliates get all the commissions without contributing anything.

How can Virus Positive Technologies Help You Fight Cookie Stuffing?

Your marketing team needs to know what is cookie stuffing to stay protected from affiliate fraud. Virus Positive Technologies (VPT) is pioneering in the detection and monitoring of affiliate fraud. VPT monitors your affiliate networks and issues red flags during violations. It can quickly identify non-compliant behaviors because of its advanced methodology.