PayPal Honey steals affiliate links and lies about finding the best coupons

This isn't anything new. Brave browser does this, ad hijacking is a common thing. Many companies have been doing this for years, why is it only coming up now?

Everybody: Fuck Peter Thiel, fuck Elon Musk, fuck Honey, Fuck PayPal

Everybody: unflinchingly using PayPal

Why do I feel like mentioning the LTT was very personal?😂

I haven't trusted LTT for about 5 years now.

Ever since it was explained that Mr. Beast only smiles with his mouth, I get skeeved out every time I see him.

Just saw a video that the honey people are making another SCAM called PIE. They make an Ad blocker, then put their own ads. wtf.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VTxnM3J0I0k?width=828&height=466

Just open their privacy policy and done. They sell your browsing info, and you could stop it there

I'm so proud I never consumed these guys shit

If something advertises on youtube it’s a scam. Simple to remember really.

Ltt didn't hide shit, they posted it on a public forum

I said it in another post: if you see a bunch of influencers all suddenly peddling the same stuff, stay away. All of them can be bought.

Wait, when did Paypal buy Honey? 😳

I never trusted Honey to begin with but this goes far deeper than I ever expected. I always wondered "yeah, but where do they get their money?" I always figured it was just a way to take people's data and sell it to data brokers (which they probably also do, let's be honest) but this is just blatant fraud. Stealing affiliate money from links and having companies pay them to purposefully give out worse coupon codes is just devious through and through. It's basically free money and everybody else, whether influencer or consumer, get fucked over in the process.

Linus Tech Tips really is scum. Yet more proof of that.

Honestly I thought all of this was common knowledge at this point, back when I used Honey (many years ago) I saw its affiliate code in the address bar and thought "huh, that's how they make money"

A useful question to ask when hearing about a new company is "What's your business model?"

I thought it was just collecting and selling user data but while I'd bet it's still happening - wow, this is way craftier.

I used honey for a while and it was working great for me with "exclusive" coupons and Cashback and then one time I bough a cellphone that was supposed to have $250 cashback. I did all the necessary steps, read the t&c, took screenshots of the offer and made the purchase. I never got the transaction to appear on their website. Sending emails it trying to contact them was futile (I even made an automatic script to send an email everyday to follow up). Fuck PayPal

Can we make a version of this add-on that replaces the links with a choice of charity links?

Might as well do some good in the chaos of the internet.

If you're sitting at a poker table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

Alternately, if you look at an online service and can't tell what the product is, It's you.

I have been using PayPal increasingly for online payments. Not sure why. I have heard old stories about PayPal but Honey seems really bad. Its basically a given that any fintech company are going to be dodgy scammers but PayPal seemed almost grown up and respectable. Guess not.

Literally just watched that. I agree with his consideration that that's fraud.

PayPal is not customer friendly, they also straight up steal funds by locking your account

https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-millions-in-the-paypal-mafia/

Pretty sure this was already posted yesterday when it came out. Or it might have been a different community.

Watching the full video is important though because they are scamming the consumer too, not just """influencers""". Someone made a great comment about how it's just one greedy troll stealing from another and has no effect on the consumer since they still save money but Honey not actually giving you the best coupons on purpose is next level dickholery.

Lying about the coupons really should be the focus so people stop harming themselves using Honey.

At this point, anything these goons "influencers" try to sell me on is a scam, and I'll avoid it at all costs. People do insane things for money. Just watched a coffeezilla video on the CSGO gambling scam and holy shit, people are straight up heartless and have no humanity in them.

I guess most people don’t have much knowledge about affiliate link URLs and how easily they can be rewritten to shift where the commission goes. I implemented SkimLinks on a hunch of websites so I’ve seen it before. Forum owners used to get upset about anyone posting product links in their comments because they night include an affiliate code. SkimLinks adds JavaScript to every page that rewrites those codes to the forum owner’s personal account. It will even insert an affiliate code into basic Amazon links that don’t have one. Once this came out, forums went a lot easier on Amazon links.

After seeing all this, the second I spot a browser extension that wants to get between me and Amazon, I immediately assume they will rewrite all the links for their own benefit. Otherwise what’s in it for them? This news isn’t much of a surprise.

I deleted my PayPal account a couple of months ago already. Problem solved.

LTT… toilet flushing! I had no expectations of paypal. To my shame I used them in the past,but deleted my account after reading how scummy they are. fuck paypal and anything affiliated with them.

I am so disconnected from this influencer thing that I first heard about Honey when news were pushing that it was a scam. I'm just living under a rock and sometimes that saves my butt, I guess.

I don't really wanna watch a video... but how do you "steal" affiliate links or coupon codes?

If you are doing affiliate marketing for a company and they give you a coupon code for 10% off called GET10OFF and that code gets used, the affiliate marketer gets the sale no matter where they got that code from?