Cookie Stuffing
An introduction to Cookie Stuffing.
What exactly is cookie stuffing. Cookie stuffing is the situation where a website places a cookie on your computer from another domain. This can be accomplished with a few different methods that I will go over in the next couple of weeks. Each week I will feature a new method.
Why would we want to cookie stuff? Its all about affiliate networks. Affiliate networks will pay you for referrerals to products that they advertise. Under normal circumstances, a user has to click on a special link constructed simililar to the following
http://www.fakeproduct.com/refer.php?affid=your_id
Affiliate networks use these specially crafted urls to track the amount of prospective clients your sending to their advertisers. Once the user has clicked on the link, they proceed to the website where a cookie is placed on their machine. When the affiliate network reads the cookie, it will tell them who sent them that lead.
Cookie stuffing basically forces a cookie onto a users computer without them even have to visit the affiliate website. All the user has to do is visit a page that was specially crafted to force a cookie (cookie stuff).
Affiliate networks are not naive to this tactic and are quick to enforce (ban/remove) you from their network should they detect fraudulent activity. In the weeks to come, we will show you the basics, and go over advanced techniques to safely hide your cookies.
