Honey Trap
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Did you install the "Honey" browser extension?
https://lifehacker.com/tech/honey-influencer-scam-explained
Link to videoHoney, which is owned by PayPal, is a popular browser extension—with 19 million users on Chrome alone—but the shopping tool is being accused of some seriously shady practices, including keeping users away from the lowest online prices and blocking creator affiliate links to deprive them of revenue. The scandal surfaced through a comprehensive video posted by MegaLag, who calls it "the biggest influencer scam of all time" based on an investigation that's apparently been ongoing for several years. MegaLag claims to have reviewed masses of documents, emails, and online ads in the course of the investigation, as well as having spoken to victims and personally falling foul of Honey's methods.
Honey is a browser extension meant to give you any relevant discount codes available when you shop online and automatically apply them to your checkout price, instantly saving you money. The idea is that using the extension means you don't have to hunt for coupons and codes, and in several influencer video promotions, it's described as free money. But Honey seems too good to be true: In tests across multiple sites, MegaLag was able to manually find working coupon codes when Honey couldn't find any, or better coupon codes than the ones automatically Honey applied. What's more, when bigger discounts are applied at checkout, Honey doesn't appear to add these codes to its database.
This is allegedly how Honey strikes deals with retailers, by giving them control over the discount codes that shoppers can access. MegaLag found further evidence in Honey's own FAQs and in a podcast produced by Honey, which was intended to promote its services to online businesses. In certain cases, users are limited in what coupon codes they can use if Honey is installed.
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I’m not entirely sure that I have a problem with this. It depends really on the promises made to the consumer, and frankly, I am not motivated to look it up. But let’s say that retailers/manufacturers have codes that vary from 5% to 30% off for various reasons. Now let’s say that a typical consumer is either too lazy or not savvy enough to find all of these 30% off codes. So the browser automatically puts in a 15% off code. That’s still a net win for the consumer. 95% of these consumers weren’t going to find the 15% code, let alone the 30%…
It’s not too dissimilar to shopping in person. I’m not going to drive to every single grocery store to find out who has the lowest prices on every single good. I’m going to Wegmans, and trusting that if some of the prices are higher, they aren’t that much higher…
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I had it for a few months when I first heard about it (here probably) but got rid of it later.
