Affiliate ID Security Issue?

[Paul Elliott]

A friend has an affiliate program set up by her site techs.

When I set up a redirect page with my Aff. ID, the redirect works well; however, the URL that shows up in the browser window is the proper page on her site but with my Aff. ID tagged onto the end of the URL.

Is this a problem that could be exploited to steal an affiliate's commissions?

I am under the impression that the security of the Aff. ID is one of the reasons why a redirect page is used.

Her tech support says, "There's no way anyone can steal commissions from your affiliates!"

I do know of a specific instance where commissions were stolen from an affiliate with Commission Junction.

Am I unnecessarily concerned?

How should the Aff. ID be handled in the background?

Thank you very much.

Paul Elliott

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Paul, welcome to 5 Star.

The instances you've heard of mainly where an affiliate cut off the affiliate ID and replaced it with their own happens mainly on Clickbank where an affiliate wants to personally buy the product themselves. But a sale has to be made so if you are an affiliate for a luggage company no one is going to replace your ID and buy a $50 suitcase in order to get a $5 commission.

On CJ the affiliate ID is right out in the open too but you do have an option to cloak it within CJ. The commission stealing you've heard of on CJ happens a different way and hiding your ID or cloaking your link doesn't necessarily stop it. It's too complicated to go into here.

BUT with an inhouse program you don't really need to worry too much about commission stealing, it seldom happens.

If you want to cloak the affiliate link from customers because you think the link looks long a suspicious and could deter sales then that's a reason to cloak. You can change merchantsite.com?refid12345678 to yoursite.com/keyword or yoursite.com/merchant. The way most people I know do it is with HTAccess.

Here's how:
Using .htaccess to Hide Affiliate Links | Click Consultants Affiliate Marketing Blog

 

[Paul Elliott]

Linda, thank you very much for your complete and helpful reply.

Paul