Did you know PayPal's Honey Extension In Trouble After New Video Exposes Shady Tactics Causing Loss of Over 3 Million Users
One of Chrome’s most popular extensions, PayPal’s Honey is in trouble
after losing more than 3 million users. The news comes after a shocking
new video exposed its shady tactics that are now under scrutiny.
For
many years, people relied on the feature to get the best coupon codes
which would save them money without any additional cost. But there is
more than meets the eye as shared in a recent video.
The company
promised to land the lowest price for consumers with promotion codes
and coupons added to online products. The appeal was massive and it
struck with the public as it was for free. Now, new details revealed
shared how it does not do this for free. Instead, of directly taking
money from the consumer, they are linked to affiliate programs which
give them a fee for making referral sales.
So in reality, you
tell the retailer that Honey sent you here and therefore the extension
receives its share when you make the purchase. The fact that this was
hidden from users for years has left them feeling blindsided and
betrayed, leading to instant uninstallations.
Thanks to the video published by MegaLag recently,
evidence showed how Honey replaces affiliate codes from different
sources like YouTube videos with that which belongs to them. They take
full credit of the sale shamelelssly and end up stealing a fee from the
other source’s referral. The feature is dubbed last click attribution
and that’s how it’s been working for all this time. Now the strange fact
is that it was revealed only recently, taking creators and many users
by shock.
What
is even more worrisome in this video is how the extension does the
exact opposite of what it promises to users. Instead of looking for the
best coupon code, it works alongside retailers to disguise better
discount codes and only show those that retailers want buyers to see.
This is why it was noticed over the years how it rarely offers major
discounts. Another alarming feature is that whether or not a user makes a
purchase, small interactions with the extension also allow it to seal
attributions for a sale.
The video that detailed more about the
Honey scam received more than 14M views since it was published at the
end of December. This is why people didn’t waste any time uninstalling
the feature from Chrome. Stats from Chrome shared more than 3 million
users bidding farewell recently.
Today, the extension stands at 17M which is a drop from its 20M
figure of users seen in the past week. So as you can tell, losing 3
million customers is a major downfall. For now, Honey is staying hush
and is yet to speak about the accusations in public but we can confirm
that a class action legal case was filed related to the incident.