Honey scam

This one's blowing up at the moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk

Basically, it's the Honey browser extension, owned by PayPal. It's really quite unbelievable how badly-behaved this thing is - it apparently scams the creators who promote it, scams anybody with an affiliate link (even if they're unrelated to Honey), scams the consumer and scams all the businesses who people with the extension try to purchase from.

And, worst of all, it's not even a bug - it's entirely designed behaviour.

This is one of those videos where, every time you think "OK, that's about as bad as it gets", it actually gets worse. Apparently part 2 is another level entirely - from the preview, it looks like it might even be using discount code exploits against businesses who don't join their program (just a guess, mind).

If you've got it installed...do yourself (and everyone else) a favour and get rid of it, because it's not doing what you think it is.

23 min video. Tell me why it's bad that I use it for discount codes when I'm buying a hat

HerbieTheRadDorklift said:

23 min video. Tell me why it's bad that I use it for discount codes when I'm buying a hat

It will only show you discount codes for retailers signed up to Honey, so won’t give you the best deal if there’s a better discount somewhere else.

For anything else as a consumer, it would make little difference other than being sneakier than sneaky. If you click an affiliate link, it’ll replace it with one of its own so they earn the discount, not wherever you got the link from. Stuff like that.

HerbieTheRadDorklift said:

23 min video. Tell me why it's bad that I use it for discount codes when I'm buying a hat

1 - It steals the commission from every affiliate link you follow, even if it doesn't find you a discount code
2 - It intentionally holds back the biggest discount codes
3 - It exploits browser behaviour to manipulate cookies on your browser to extract the most money from your sale
4 - The whole "PayPal Rewards" thing is an absolute scam
5 - We don't know what part 2 is, but if my guess is true then it's actively destroying businesses that don't cooperate

Basically, it's outright fraud, perpetuated by one of the biggest companies on the planet.

I can see why a YouTube is upset about it replacing affiliate links. Not sure I've ever used one myself. It's annoying it doesn't give the biggest discount codes. 

HerbieTheRadDorklift said:

I can see why a YouTube is upset about it replacing affiliate links. Not sure I've ever used one myself. It's annoying it doesn't give the biggest discount codes. 

Thing is, it's not just the influencers who've done deals with Honey who get ripped here - if, for example, I'd done a deal with a few businesses and put affiliate links on here to try to boost the forum's coffers (which we did once, albeit not for the money), it would hijack those as well even though we're nothing to do with Honey.

In fact, as I recall, we used the affiliate link functionality for a trial with one of the big gear retailers a few years back - we wanted to see what the results were. It was just when Honey was at its peak of advertising everywhere - the results were waaaaaay lower than we expected (like, a couple of orders of magnitude lower, and the tracking at my end and their end didn't even remotely agree), and so we didn't bother continuing and I've never done it since. I'm now wondering if it was because Honey was hijacking the clicks.

This popped up on YouTube a few days ago, I haven’t watched it yet.  

duotone said:

This popped up on YouTube a few days ago, I haven’t watched it yet.  

TBH I’ve never heard of Honey, but maybe I’m living under a rock.  Has Honey stopped operating now?

Nope, still very much going - the original developers sold it to PayPal, who operate it now.

The original devs have moved on to PIE - which basically does the same thing, but for ads. It blocks all ads, and then when you say "show ads" on a given site (thinking that you're supporting that website), PIE shows you the ads under its own account and they pocket the ad money.