Editing PayPal Honey (section)

==Incidents==
===Content-creator lawsuits (''Dec. 2024'')===
In December 2024, a [[class-action lawsuit]] was filed against PayPal by [[Wendover Productions, LLC]] alleging that Honey manipulated affiliate marketing links without proper disclosure or compensation. The suits claim Honey replaced legitimate affiliate links with their own, even when no coupons were found for users. This practice allegedly impacted both content creators and consumers who intended to support specific affiliates.<ref name="wendover-v-paypal"/>

<p>[[Gamers Nexus, LLC]] later filed a class-action lawsuit against PayPal in January 2025 highlighting the same issues.<ref name="gamersnexus-v-paypal-holdings"/>

===Affiliate-tampering controversy (''Dec. 2024'')===
In December 2024, investigations revealed that Honey was engaging in systematic manipulation of affiliate-marketing links. The investigations found that when users clicked on content creators' affiliate links and subsequently used Honey during checkout, the extension would:

* Delete the original affiliate's tracking cookie
* Replace it with Honey's own affiliate cookie via a hidden redirect tab
* Claim the commission that was intended for the original content creator

This practice is an example of "cookie stuffing," where an affiliate injects their own affiliate cookie without the user's knowledge.<ref>[https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/laguna-niguel-man-receives-fifteen-month-prison-term-defrauding-ebay "Laguna Niguel Man Receives Fifteen-Month Prison Term For Defrauding eBay"] ''U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of California''. August 4, 2014. Retrieved January 18, 2025.</ref>

Additionally, contrary to marketing claims about finding "the best deals", Honey was found to have agreements with partner stores allowing them to control which coupon codes appeared through the extension. This meant stores could hide better discounts while only showing Honey users lower-value coupons. The practice directly contradicted years of marketing claims that promised users they would "always get the best deal possible."<ref name="megalag-video"/>

Simon Wijckmans, CEO of c/side, noted that "When users purchased via an affiliate link with Honey installed, commissions intended for creators were redirected to Honey. Additionally, Honey misrepresented deals as the best discounts while partnering with companies to hide better offers."<ref name="techopedia-article"/>

===Significant changes on the Terms of Service (''Oct. 2024 - Dec. 2024'')===
Several parts of the Terms of service were updated and added, such as

* Change of the Governing Law from England and Wales to California in the United States
* Addition of a Arbitration.
* a number of small changes between the lines.

Also noteworthy is that on January 8 2025 older versions of the TOS were available on archive.org, today (Jan 28 2025) the archive will show a "Failed to Fetch" error.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20220000000000*/https://www.joinhoney.com/terms "Archived versions of joinhoney.com on archive.org"] a fully functional archive of multiple versions were available prior to January 25 2025 dating back to 2022</ref>

To prevent loss of those details:
* copy of [[Paypal Honey Terms of Services from December 2024]]
* copy of [[Paypal Honey Terms of Services from January 2025]] 

''on a more funny note, the current live version of the TOS<ref name="terms-of-use"/> (checked on 5 February 2025) shows "Last updated January 16, 2024"''