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

This page reports cookie-stuffing by consumernow.com, targeting netzero.com. In my testing, this is but one of many affiilate web sites targeting this and other merchants.

As of November 4, the http://consumernow.com/NetZero_coupon page was #3 in Google results for "netzero coupon" (without quotes). The specified URL included the following JavaScript code, which opened a CJ tracking link in a new window:

<script language="javascript">
<!--
w=window.open('http://www.consumernow.com/coupon/NetZero','NetZero_coupon');w.blur();
//-->
</script>

The /coupon/NetZero URL performed a HTTP 302 redirect to a QKSRV affiliate link:

GET /coupon/NetZero 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.consumernow.com
Connection: Keep-Alive

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 16:32:41 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://www.qksrv.net/click-517038-4002846
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=96
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html

12
<h1>Link Sent</h1>
0

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.