According to Courthouse News, internet marketer Shawn Hogan - owner of the popular DigitalPoint forums - is being sued by the eBay corporation for Cookie Stuffing, along with two other men, Todd Dunning and Brian Dunning.

For those of you not familiar with what Cookie Stuffing is, it’s when a webmaster, or other person who has the capability to edit the html of a webpage, uses a delivery device (usually an image or a flash file) to drop a cookie on the computer of anyone who views the page.  The end user is unaware of the cookie having been delivered.  Then, if the person at a later time visits the site that the cookie was related to (in this case, ebay) and makes a purchase, the cookie stuffer gets an affiliate commission for that sale.  Highly Blackhat and obviously illegal.  However, people generally just get their affiliate account suspended, they don’t generally get sued!

eBay also recently deleted a whole SLEW of affiliates, sending out a form letter saying that the traffic they were sending to the eBay site was under-engaged.

Personally, I am really happy to see them taking action against cookie stuffers.  As an active (AND HAPPY!) member of the eBay affiliate program, frickin’ cookie stuffers take money straight out of my pocket.

The only thing that concerns me is that it seems the most recent mass bannings also caught a bunch of whitehats up in the nets, and it concerns me that if the large-scale bannings continue, my account may be one of the sacrificial dolphins killed in the pursuit of tuna, so to speak.

NOTE TO EBAY IF YOU’RE READING THIS - I love you, please don’t ban me!

Tags: lawsuit, Shawn Hogan, Cookie Stuffing, eBay

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