Cookie-Stuffing Targeting dell.com
Cookie-Stuffing Targeting Major Affiliate Merchants - Ben Edelman

This page reports cookie-stuffing by jumpondeals.com, targeting dell.com.

As of November 5, the http://www.jumpondeals.com/coupons/dell_computers_home_office page was #15 in Google results for "dell coupon" (without quotes). The specified URL included the following JavaScript code, which opened a LinkShare tracking link in a new window:

<script language="JavaScript">
<!-- window.focus();
setTimeout("window.focus()",900);
//--></script><script language="javascript">
<!--
w=window.open('http://www.jumpondeals.com/store/dell_computers_home_office','dell_computers_home_office');w.blur();
//-->
</script>

The /store/dell_computers_home_office URL performed a HTTP 302 redirect to a QKSRV affiliate link:

GET /store/dell_computers_home_office HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Host: www.jumpondeals.com
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cookie: i1=35:41:1:1099697155:1342|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 23:25:58 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.3.9 FrontPage/5.0.2.2634a mod_ssl/2.8.19 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9
Location: http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=HAHu6s1Hzp4&offerid=63085.10000366&type=3&subid=0
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=97
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html

12
<h1>Link Sent</h1>
0

In my testing, this is but one of many affiilate web sites targeting Dell. For example, the current #3 Google result for "dell coupon" is www.dailyedeals.com/free_online_coupons/dell.htm, a page which uses cookie-stuffing as previously shown as to Crucial.com, Barnes & Noble, and Overstock.com.

I captured the resulting on-screen display in a video (WindowsMedia format, view in Full Screen mode). I also preserved a full packet log of these findings.