eBay Takes Affiliates To Court Over Unauthorized Cookies

August 28, 2008 · Filed Under Internet Marketing, eBay, ecommerce · Comment 

 Gamimg The System

 Earlier this week it had been reported that several eBay Partner (affiliates) had been booted out of the program. There were posts on the eBay discussion boards regarding these removals as well reports from several sources such as Auctionbytes that the ousted Partners might consider retaliation against eBay in some form.

eBay Pushes Back

While some of those that had been ousted from the Partners program complained on the discussion boards that eBay was angry because these Partners had beat them in the in the search engine rankings enabling these Partners to reap large Partner payments it seems there may be more to the story.

Posted on the Charles G Mullen blog late last night is a report that eBay is suing 3 of it’s former Partners for devising software that clandestinely place cookies on visitors computers to redirect them to eBay without the visitors knowledge.

While many popular websites do very well as eBay Partners driving traffic to the eBay site, it seems that some may have found a way to do it underhandedly. An eBay moderator posted an explanation for the actions taken on the discussion board explaining eBay was attempting to provide the higest quality traffic to the site.

The Right Thing To Do

While I can find no evidence that the users posting on the discussion boards are those indicated in the lawsuit I have to believe there is definetly a connection.

While I am often at odds with eBay over management decisions, I believe this is the right thing for eBay to do. Gaming the system to reap large payments from the Partner program is wrong. Placing cookies on a visitors computer that basically hijacks the user is unethical and I dare say illegal.

I believe this may also have an affect on the eBay visitor numbers though in the scheme of things it may be a small number it is a number.

   

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