{"id":46274,"date":"2025-01-01T15:52:08","date_gmt":"2025-01-01T20:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=46274"},"modified":"2025-03-12T09:54:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T13:54:29","slug":"honey-extension-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/01\/honey-extension-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Honey Extension Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Nield<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Honey, which is owned by PayPal, is a popular browser extension—with 19 million users on Chrome alone<\/a>—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<\/a>, 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Wes Davis<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Honey works by popping up an offer to find coupon codes for you while you’re checking out in an online shop. But as MegaLag notes, it frequently fails to find a code, or offers a Honey-branded one, even if a simple internet search will cover something better. The Honey website’s pitch<\/a> is that it will “find every working promo code on the internet.” But according to MegaLag’s video, ignoring better deals is a feature of Honey’s partnerships with its retail clients.<\/p>

MegaLag also says Honey will hijack affiliate revenue from influencers. According to MegaLag, if you click on an affiliate link from an influencer, Honey will then swap in its own tracking link when you interact with its deal pop-up at check-out. That’s regardless of whether Honey found you a coupon or not, and it results in Honey getting the credit for the sale, rather than the YouTuber or website whose link led you there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

The official response<\/a> denies nothing:<\/p>\n

\n

Honey is free to use and provides millions of shoppers with additional savings on their purchases whenever possible. Honey helps merchants reduce cart abandonment and comparison shopping while increasing sales conversion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2025-01-02): See also: Wladimir<\/a> Palant<\/a> and Marques Brownlee<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Preetham Narayanareddy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Honey sponsored Mr. Beast in 3 videos, gaining a total of 140M views after spending approximately $120,000.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2025-01-06): Elliot Shank<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Lawyer YouTuber is starting a class-action lawsuit<\/a> against PayPal\/Honey.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2025-03-12): Jay Peters<\/a> (via Dare Obasanjo<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Google has updated its affiliate ads policy for Chrome extensions after creators accused PayPal’s popular Honey browser extension of being a “scam.”<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

It is not permitted to inject affiliate links without related user action and without providing a tangible benefit to users.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Nield: Honey, 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-01-01T20:52:10Z","apple_news_api_id":"8551aa02-1bbf-43f9-b100-e948df2a253b","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-03-12T13:54:32Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAw==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AhVGqAhu_Q_mxAOlI3yolOw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2036,699,101,456,2707,30,39,2598,170,2246,509,96],"class_list":["post-46274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-app-store-scams","tag-bargain","tag-business","tag-googlechrome","tag-honey","tag-mac","tag-macappstore","tag-macos-15-sequoia","tag-paypal","tag-safari-extensions","tag-shopping","tag-web"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46274"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47023,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46274\/revisions\/47023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}