Jeff Leget, Director of Operations, at Clickbank discusses potential security issues on the new IE and Firefox releases. He highlight that the ‘consumer misconception about browser cookies plagues many online retailers. When consumers blindly disable cookies, online retailers have difficulty providing a targeted and personalized experience to the consumer.”

This point is taken up by one of Clickbank’s retailers who asks if “Chrome is able to let the user do private browsing, meaning the cookie in a user’s PC is deleted latest at the end of a session. How will ClickBank track a sale when the same user attempts to purchase an item in another session, perhaps days later, yet the affiliate’s cookie is not on the user’s PC anymore?”

What proprietary methods are used by ClickBank to overcome this problem?

ClickBank’s response is that the default security settings in Google Chrome do NOT inhibit affiliate commission tracking through Hoplinks to the order form. Google Chrome accepts the 1st party cookie that ClickBank sets. Google Chrome does offer security “tweaks” that restrict 3rd party cookies. When affiliates use Hoplinks correctly (meaning the Hoplink is not embedded in an image or frame) these settings do not affect the functionality of the ClickBank 1st party cookies.

Of course, you can setup your browser so that it erases cookies after each session. Clickbank  add that after analyzing millions of Hoplinks it receives, they found that nearly all users complete their purchase within the same browser session within 1 hour. In most cases, even if the user does erase their cookies, ClickBank’s proprietary tracking methods often match the consumer back to the referring affiliate. ClickBank’s proprietary tracking methods are considered a trade secret and cannot be shared here.

However, another raises a potential issue. “I just tested it with FireFox, I clicked on a well formatted hop-link, ended up on a vendor page. Then I removed the cookie from FireFox, closed FireFox, re-started FireFox and went directly to the vendor page, now in a new session. Following the link to the order payment form I noticed this at the bottom:

[affiliate = none]

Hence, it doesn’t appear to be tracked by Clickbank anymore, does it? Or is it still doing a proper tracking but merely doesn’t display the [affiliate = whoever] note at the bottom of the payment form?

Full article: http://www.clickbank.com/blog/2008/09/04/ie8-beta-and-the-attack-on-cookies/

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