[cd34]

I think this is a somewhat recent change in that a cookie must 'age' before ccbill replaces it.

The benefit is that if you send a surfer to a site, and a toolbar that was voluntarily installed by millions of the surfing public opens a popup window to that sponsor, rather than the new cookie winning, the old cookie wins. I don't know what the overwrite timeout is for ccbill, but, I would think this is a relatively good thing as a sale would still be gained by the first person referring if the 2nd referral came minutes later.

The flip side to this is -- ccbill has always been vulnerable to another way of doing this that certain TGP gallery submitters have employed which is almost invisible to the surfer.

Now you know why there are so many threads saying 'spam me with ccbill sponsors'... because they intend to overwrite those cookies with their voluntarily installed toolbar.

I would suspect that ccbill has put that protection in place to help the webmaster rather than to harm them. The second guy sort of gets lost in the collateral damage which is regrettable, but, it does end the effectiveness of certain toolbars.