Google Chrome's "Incognito" and IE's InPrivate - will they affect affiliate tracking?
 

Last week IE 8's "porn mode" was unveiled. Today I read about Google's rumored web browser, "Chrome", containing a feature for "anonymous" web browsing. So my concern is whether or not these "new" features will affect affiliate tracking at all.

I'm all for privacy, but fucking with affiliate cookies would piss me off a bit.

Chrome: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-01-n47.html
IE 8 InPrivate: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/200...d-privacy.aspx

The cookie clearing functionality of IE8's InPrivate isn't new, obviously. But the fact that it's being branded and named as a prominent feature is troubling. I'm all for blocking the Doubleclicks of the world and fucking with their cookies, but sponsor cookies? That cuts into my (and your) bottom line :)

I thought most sites would use sessions not cookies for storing temp affiliate codes, so I don't see it being that much of an issue.

I'm using Chrome now -- it's great. The incognito window -- aka porn window -- doesn't SAVE Cookies between sessions.

Not sure how many users will continue using it when they realize what a pain it is that no sites keep you logged in from day to day in that window.

This will effect livejasmin tracking cookies but I think that's all really.

Interesting educational toon about Crome.

Holy Shit...never click "open all bookmarks" :)
Is that one of those features that the Google Comic Book would consider too many?

As long as they aren't redirecting the link to another URL string, I think things should be OK.

I think this might be a problem for some of the CCBill only programs. I'm not 100% sure on that tho. I hope not, some of the CCBill only are some of my faves!

What concerns me is losing the cookies that stay dormant in the browser for n-number of days and credit sales after a customer leaves the site, closes the browser, then comes back later on (like hony points out -- things like cookies get flushed.) A lot of users will no doubt use these new "privacy" features for adult sites specifically because of their bad reputation for malware and other garbage (stuff the typical GG&J member avoids subjecting their traffic to anyway.) But as Jay pointed out, some URLs keep affiliate ID's intact while others don't.

I always just assumed if you sent Joe Sixpack to Holyshitfuckingtitties.com, then Joe Sixpack closes his browser to run an errand, comes back, and types in www.Holyshitfuckingtitties.com in the address bar, the old cookie with affiliate info gets reactivated (unless it expired already.) That was always my assumption, anyway.

Hmmm. I have yet to look at either of these. I know that there are ways to detect sites which do not allow cookies to be set, but its there anyway to detect when either browser is in these modes? .g. does it specify this in the user agent header?

This is a good thread, which needs to stay at the top.

This needs a bump!!

After playing about with the browser a bit, I have decided I like it and I will certainly be keeping it on as a testing browser to make sure my sites function in it.

Nothing comes close to FF for me though, the shear amount of add ons and extras alone keep it way ahead of the rest.

Interesting to see that Google has backed off on their normal Copyright grabbing terms though.|bullshit|

Google users hold onto their copyright
A day after the Google Chrome browser was released, a controversial clause in its End User Licence Agreement has been removed because of concerns it breached people's privacy and copyright. Users who downloaded the free browser on Wednesday were asked to agree to a clause that gave Google a "worldwide … licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly, perform, publicly display and distribute" any information they typed into a website.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/googl...0904-49xu.html

Google's New Chrome Browser Known Bugs/Issues
 

Check this out guys...

http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/6355

Pretty astonishing to me. I'm not sure if it has been fixed yet.

Also, another issue that isn't as serious would be if you were to move your mouse cursor over this link in Google's Chrome web browser, it crashes.

I didn't see anyone else talking about such issues so I decided to include what I've found. I am going to wait a while before testing Google's Chrome; Firefox 3.0 works perfect for me.

Anyone else using Chrome notice if these issues have been fixed, or possibly any others?

hm.. If somebody write about we give incognito howevere thy looking for you..
hmmmmmmmmm

I wonder about the cookie issue too. I use CCBill quite a lot, and many programs use cookies as their main if not only means of tracking. And I'm also concerned about the fact that cookies get deleted with every session. I know some users already delete cookies, but this would increase it. I wonder at what point will a new technology be implemented for tracking affiliate sales more accurately?

Cookies will still function in Chrome during that particular user session, but they will not be saved once the user closes an incognito browser tab.

Can I point out that one hell of a lot of users know how to delete their cache/cookies/sessions etc - and regularly do after looking up porn.

It is one of the first "techie" things they learn about the net. So I would imagine this is more a time saving device for a lot of people as opposed to a new way of browsing.

What I think is funny is that there were plenty of complaints by webmasters about 1 hr and 10 hr cookies by affiliate programs...but little concern about these new browsers (ie 8 also) not saving cookies at all after the session is closed

We can choose which sponsors we premote, but we can't do anything about what browsers and browser features our surfers will choose to use. You think a Google rep would give a shit what I think about cookie-life?

What purpose would us adding a complaint in this thread serve?