Latest Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting And Tricking Testers 2025

MegaLag’s December 2024 video introduced 18 million viewers to serious questions about Honey, the widely-used browser shopping plug-in—in particular, whether Honey abides by the rules set by affiliate networks and merchants, and whether Honey takes commissions that should flow to other affiliates.  I wrote in January that I thought Honey was out of line.  In particular, I pointed out the contracts that limit when and how Honey may present affiliate links, and I applied those contracts to the behavior MegaLag documented.  Honey was plainly breaking the rules.

As it turns out, Honey’s misconduct is considerably worse than MegaLag, I, or others knew.  When Honey is concerned that a user may be a tester—a “network quality” employee, a merchant’s affiliate manager, an affiliate, or an enthusiast—Honey designs its software to honor stand down in full.  But when Honey feels confident that it’s being used by an ordinary user, Honey defies stand down rules.  Multiple methods support these conclusions: I extracted source code from Honey’s browser plugin and studied it at length, plus I ran Honey through a packet sniffer to collect its config files, and I cross-checked all of this with actual app behavior.  Details below.  MegaLag tested too, and has a new video with his updated assessment.

(A note on our relationship: MegaLag figured out most of this, but asked me to check every bit from first principles, which I did.   I added my own findings and methods, and cross-checked with VPT records of prior observations as well as historic Honey config files.  More on that below, too.)

Behaving better when it thinks it’s being tested, Honey follows in Volkswagen’s “Dieselgate” footsteps.  Like Volkswagen, the cover-up is arguably worse than the underlying conduct.  Facing the allegations MegaLag presented last year, Honey could try to defend presenting its affiliate links willy-nilly—argue users want this, claim to be saving users money, suggest that network rules don’t apply or don’t mean what they say.  But these new allegations are more difficult to defend.  Designing its software to perform differently when under test, Honey reveals knowing what the rules require and knowing they’d be in trouble if caught.  Hiding from testers reveals that Honey wanted to present affiliate links as widely as possible, despite the rules, so long as it doesn’t get caught.  It’s not a good look.  Affiliates, merchants, and networks should be furious.

The basic bargain of affiliate mark

Source: HackerNews