PayPal-owned Honey accused of deceptive practices and more

Gandalf_The_Grey

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When PayPal acquired the shopping service and browser extension Honey, many thought that the $4 billion that the company paid was a steep price for the service.

Honey has faced its fair share off criticism in the past. A YouTuber claims now that he has uncovered deceptive business practices that impact users of the extensions but also the very people that promoted Honey.

Honey is a browser extension. Once installed, it is highlighting discounts and other beneficial codes when users visit shopping sites.



The YouTuber MegaLag claims that Honey is bad for customers, webmasters, and also influencers who advertised the service.

One of the main claims surrounds the setting of affiliate cookies. According to the information, Honey is said to save affiliate cookies on user systems unethically.

Good to know: affiliate cookies are used to determine payments to third-parties. A basic example is a webmaster to adds a link with an affiliate code to a website. When a user clicks on the link to visit the linked resource, an affiliate cookie may be placed so that the linked resource can pay the webmaster when the visitor makes purchases.

Honey is saving affiliate cookies when users activate coupons, when users use the cashback program Honey Gold, and even when there are not any discounts in the service's database and the user confirms that, according to the report.

The main issue, according to the YouTuber, is that Honey overwrites cookies from websites or other creators.

In other words: Honey will be paid when a user of the extension makes a purchase, not the webmaster or content creator who lead the visitor there. Apart from that, cookies may allow sites and marketers to track users.

 

Marko :)

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I'm not familiar with foreign web shops, but here Honey is totally useless. Our web shops either apply coupons automatically when you add something to the cart or they write it in product listing and ask you to apply it yourself. All active coupons are mentioned on the site as well so there's no need for searching the web.

Beside, these shopping extensions were always known for malicious intent so I don't see why Honey would be any different. I kind of expected it to be shady.
 

TairikuOkami

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I used a similar extension, but I got like $10 per month, it was not worth the time nor effort, not to mention privacy and security. Now I would just pay $10 monthly to leave me alone.
 
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