[ecomcity]

Originally Posted by curt

You mean to tell me that when a person clicks an affiliate link (not spyware affiliate links) and a cookie is set so that the person gets credit, there's something wrong with that? That's one of the basic building blocks of an affiliate program. Most affiliate programs are NOT tied to spyware or spyware BHOs. Besides that any affiliate cookies set by browsers do NOT harm.

LOL... most networks and all major merchants run spyware data mining applications on top of the affiliate sales tracking cookie. Every network and merchant refuses to address here whether multiple clickstream datamining applications potentually destroy affiliate sales tracking on certain network and shopping cart combinations. One respected AM here for a trusted popular computer program quit his AM job when HITBOX destroyed his sales reporting integretity efforts. Net result was an increase use by merchants of Hitbox type applications as they descovered it reduced commission exposure while providing in-house SEO/SEM campaigns useful stats to by-pass affiliate commissions.

CounterSpy detects all data mining application cookies as spyware cookie tracks to the Adwhore industry's pilfering & sales of consumer clickstream data. Your Bank, and even the US Post Office, sell similar privacy info when you fill out a change of address form, take out a loan or open an account. Some hosted shopping carts work with IAB/DMA info peddling direct marketing members to force a small merchant to OPT-OUT of sending every credit card cart purchase into the sheisters database upon final checkout.

Flagging Adwhore cookies as potential bad actors is a responsibility for the Anti-Spyware/Adware companies. Cookies of legit merchants using major affiliate network cookies should be given a pass with only the BHO connected merchants (Dupers like eBates -iGive -Screensavers -Smiles etc) should be on the Counterspy blacklist.

[curt]

I understand that cookies set by ebates web site and similar parasiteware web sites are in association with thiefware and should be removed.

ecomcity said:

Your Bank, and even the US Post Office, sell similar privacy info when you fill out a change of address form, take out a loan or open an account.

I don't know what that has to do with cookies. That's selling of information gathered. I have filled out Post Office papers when moving or loan papers when getting a loan—that's all paper work. They are going to sell that information regardless.

ecomcity said:

Every network and merchant refuses to address here whether multiple clickstream datamining applications potentually destroy affiliate sales tracking on certain network and shopping cart combinations.

It's possible certain datamining systems may intermittenly or totally loose track of who is suppose to get credit for the sale if they are not set up properly or they are deliberately made to subtract affiliate credit. That has nothing to do with the cookie being spyware, but of an inadvertant or deliberate flaw in the tracking system. As long as these datamining applications pass on the name value pairs of the affiliate ID's your affiliate sales will get tracked and vice-versa. Datamining is not spyware.

ecomcity said:

Net result was an increase use by merchants of Hitbox type applications as they descovered it reduced commission exposure while providing in-house SEO/SEM campaigns useful stats to by-pass affiliate commissions.

Those are cases where the merchant either mistakenly or deliberately cheated their affiliates. That's a cheating merchant or a broken tracking system, not a spyware problem.

ecomcity said:

Some hosted shopping carts work with IAB/DMA info peddling direct marketing members to force a small merchant to OPT-OUT of sending every credit card cart purchase into the sheisters database upon final checkout.

That information can be saved via a direct posting to a CGI url on the other end once the order has been placed by the buyer. Sending the record of a purchase into a database doesn't require a cookie.

What you are talking about mainly is of a privacy issue not really a spyware issue.

[ecomcity]

Spyware is a privacy issue and is monitized via tracking cookies to pad the pockets of the info peddlers. To me Affiliates are not dupes to be used to mine privacy info to the IAB or DMA members and the scumbags it eventually gets passed too...

[curt]

It seems we are talking about 2 different types of cookies here. I'm referring to the cookies set to track who sent the referral and you are talking about the type that track user surfing habits. I could care less about keeping the latter type. However, most of the affiliates agree that they want their affiliate tracking cookies to be kept so that affiliates get credit for their referrals. Those are the types of cookies that should be left alone.

With that said, in all reality, the other type of surfer tracking isn't a big deal either as those cookies do not personally identify the user. They identify the computer, but there's no way for these general types of cookies to know who it is behind that computer. People cry privacy foul when in fact the web sites setting the cookies don't have a way to record who it is behind the computer—unless someone deliberately goes to ValueClicks (or other web ad agency) and enters all their personal information and invites these ad agencies to track them by their own personal information (which BTW doesn't happen like that). The ad agencies don't track like that and nobody in their right mind would enter their info at such type agencies.

Spyware is a serious privacy issue given the potential power that the spyware app has once it's installed. OTOH, cookie privacy is not serious at all which is why we need to quit labeling cookies "spyware". True spyware is an active application that can actively watch what you do, not some benign cookie that simply stores a tiny bit of tracking info. Alas, I wouldn't care if simple surfer tracking cookies got deleted, but it doesn't stop there. These spyware removers are sloppy about removing everything. Sunbelt is at least taking a positive move in this regard—it just needs to get a whole lot better at removing the right types of cookies.