Bing Cashback Can Cost You Money 333
paltemalte writes "Microsoft and various retailers have teamed up to bring you cashback on purchases made via Bing's price comparison feature. There is a little snag, though — it seems that when you have a Bing cookie living in your browser, some retailers will quote you a higher price than if you come with no Bing cookie in your system."
Hehe (Score:5, Funny)
Deal with MS, get screwed.
Nothing to see here, move on....
Blame Murdoch. (Score:2)
After all, they've got to do something to raise the money needed to pay Murdoch to remove his newspapers from Google.
Otherwise, they'll have to start laying off Microsoft emp ... oh, wait a minute ... incoming chair ... BING!
(I hat it when that happens)
Re:Hehe (Score:5, Insightful)
It is? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is slightly more userfriendlier(ish) than Google.
How is that even possible? Google is a plain white web page with a text box and a logo.
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Uhm plain is not always User friendly.
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Re:It is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule of thumb:
All great things are simple, but not every simple thing is great.
Re:It is? (Score:5, Funny)
He could explain to you why you are wrong, but unfortunately, /. won't let him post his .ppt explaining it.
Re:It is? (Score:5, Insightful)
After the search is where it gets better. The results pages on Bing are way better, and have even caused a stir at Google.
In what way? During the brief period I tried Bing, I was thoroughly unimpressed.
Giving me relevant results is the ONLY thing I care about with a search engine. Bing didn't do as well as Google - end of story. If it had done as well as Google, I still wouldn't have cared - it'd have to provide better results for me to even care.
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> In what way? During the brief period I tried Bing, I was thoroughly unimpressed.
Me too, but they can learn if they want to. And competition can only be good for the search engine market, assuming it happens on a decent level.
Re:It is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Me too, but they can learn if they want to. And competition can only be good for the search engine market,
Presumably, competition is usually good.
assuming it happens on a decent level.
Ah, sorry, that's where your theory fails.
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Lets say you've just spend the whole day calling your ISP that you will pay the bills, just let me back online because you have a World of Warcraft raid coming later at night. You're exhausted and hungry. You cant even Skype your pizza delivery guy because your internet is down. You have to walk upstairs to call from your moms phone. You're thinking about what kind of pizza to order. Now in your case you would order only the pizza bottom. It's simple and plain with no fancy extras, yo
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Just because someone said Slashdot should have more pizza analogies doesn't mean you should've went and made a new account for that exclusive purpose.
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I do understand that it may have changed a lot in the past few months, but when your first step is in shit, it's hard to take another step.
Re:It is? (Score:4, Informative)
When I tried bing, it not only didn't give me relevant results, but it stuck me with ads as the first several links - without disclosing the fact that they were ads. It tricked me, and I clicked on one. That is reprehensible behavior, and not the kind of thing I'd expect from a large multinational corporation. I equate that kind of behavior with shady porn sites and the like.
I might add, Google isn't half as good as it was years ago - tech info has become increasingly difficult to find, and any qualifiers (+, -, quotation marks) don't seem to work as well at finding the results as they used to, either. I'd love to use their old search algorithms; that's what made them popular in the first place. They were, in all likelihood, search routines for geeks, by geeks. Only in recent years have they become more "user centric", making geeky things less relevant.
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It tricked me, and I clicked on one. That is reprehensible behavior, and not the kind of thing I'd expect from a large multinational corporation.
Tired meme, or +1 funny? I choose...
You must be new here...
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Because websites that do that shit disable caching.
Re:It is? (Score:4, Informative)
Set your UA to googlebot. Unless the site author has done something really tricky, you see the full page.
Really? (Score:5, Informative)
After the search is where it gets better. The results pages on Bing are way better, and have even caused a stir at Google.
In what way does it get better? I tried Bing a few times, and its results on many test queries were roughly equal to Google's. On some queries, Google was definitely better than Bing. In no case was Bing better than Google. I just compared Bing & Google again with two simple searches to see if there was any substance to your claim, and there was not. Google still has the edge.
The first search was: tilt-integral-derivative. The two engines gave quite similar results for such a clear unambiguous and uncommon term. This implies they are spidering with similar coverage.
The second search was: colonel shakespeare -william. Google's results were clearly more relevant. This implies that Bing's ranking algorithm is still not as good as Google's. Try it with other searches where the search terms are quite common and one occurs overwhelmingly in an unwanted context. Bing borks them.
Front-end for Wolfram Alpha. (Score:5, Informative)
After the search is where it gets better.
Not really. After re-branding Live Search as "Bing", to leave the baggage associated with the old name, they also struck a deal so that Bing is a front-end for Wolfram Alpha [techcrunch.com] plus whatever Live Search might have had. So to get those results unmodified, you don't have to go through M$ filter, you can go straight to Wolfram Alpha [wolframalpha.com] skipping the middle man. Not difficult.
There are even meta-search engines that can cross-search both Google and Wolfram Alpha for you. For Firefox there is the Goofram [mozilla.org] add-on which lets you search both at the same time. If you're on Opera, Safari or Chromium, there are also search customization options there, too.
Re:Hehe (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually IE was "The Internet".
Bing is OK. I've tested it sometimes and gave me good results, sometimes better than Google. Google is too targeted by SEOs, for examples when searching for reviews one has to skip over a few results to find the meat. There is actually a service called Give my Google back which filters those SEOed sites.
Re:Hehe (Score:5, Insightful)
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Trouble is; can you actually AVOID Bing?
I mean, you can choose not to visit the search engine or any other Microsoft site, but can you catch this cookie through visiting other sites?
I'm guessing the safest way to go would be to avoid all shops that participate in the cashback program, but I doubt Microsoft will be so helpful to provide a list for this purpose.
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can you catch this cookie through visiting other sites
o_0 it's not the flu. AFAIK you can only set a cookie for your own domain or a subdomain thereof. I'm sure someone who actually cares will clarify.
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can you catch this cookie through visiting other sites
o_0 it's not the flu. AFAIK you can only set a cookie for your own domain or a subdomain thereof. I'm sure someone who actually cares will clarify.
It is possible, though unlikely. If your browser is not set to block "third party" cookies, or Bing is in your trusted sites list which allow third party cookies regardless of your general settings, then nay object (an image, js file, css stylesheet, html in an iframe, anything requested via xmlhttprequest (though same origin checks should block this), ...) requested from that domain can leave cookies. In fact "something in an iframe" can probably leave cookies anyway as I don't think it would count as thir
"Is this legal" is the wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
The right one is "Will people finding out cost more than lawsuits if it isn't legal". If the answer is yes, don't do it, if no then go on ahead.
Re:"Is this legal" is the wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
The right one is "Will people finding out cost more than lawsuits if it isn't legal". If the answer is yes, don't do it, if no then go on ahead.
Since when is simple price discrimination illegal?
It isn't like the website is charging you more based on any legally recognized actionable causes.
Re:"Is this legal" is the wrong question (Score:5, Funny)
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Because anyone using Bing cashback at this point is obviously mentally handicapped.
Oh-oh ... incoming chair ... BING!
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We both know that's a poor excuse that is barely even valid as a technicality because this is on the internet rather than in person.
Re:"Is this legal" is the wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, what's illegal is deceptive business practices.
They claim to be offering a cash back if you utilize Bing, which implies a discount, where in fact, they are charging a higher price upfront to Bing users and creating a deceptive impression that the cash back is providing a discount of their normal price.
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Well, what's illegal is deceptive business practices.
You are talking about Microsoft. A company with weak and poorly implemented technology that would have gone bust 30 years ago if it wasn't for its deceptive business practices.
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Yes yes... An operating system that can run on 95% of the available hardware, is a weak and poorly implemented technology... Linux can't run on as much hardware as windows can, nor can OS X. Ever since XP the crashes I have seen was from Bad Drivers... Just as all the crashes from Linux come from Bad Drivers. Windows Technology is actually rather sound and it works very well... It is the fact they try to keep backwards compatibility and have poor security system in terms it feels you need to have admini
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Bing doesn't tell me!!
http://www.bing.com/search?srch=105&FORM=AS5&q=%22Will+people+finding+out+cost+more+than+lawsuits+if+it+isn't+legal%22 [bing.com].
Re:"Is this legal" is the wrong question (Score:4, Interesting)
This is microsoft we're talking about, I don't think any non-physical action is even CAPABLE of hurting them at this point. They've just got too much money to harm by anything short of either a standard oil style breakup of the company.
Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
The US Department of Justice can't even successfully hit them with an antitrust suit. Microsoft settled, and then laughed off the settlement. Or else we'd have those APIs at the very least, wouldn't we? [wikipedia.org]
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Yes, the way software industry is going this days, this will revitalize Microsoft's stagnant revenues by putting them on equal footing with every other competing product in Operating System, word processing and web publishing sectors. After all, there is much more money to be made by having the best expertise to address needs of a 100000 large scale customers than by charging $15 OEM fees for a generic, unremarkable product for which many free alternatives are available.
MS Liability? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Could MS be liable in a class action lawsuit if it explicitly offered or otherwise encouraged this practice? This story could have teeth.
What makes you think that MS encourages a practice that makes prices LESS appealing using its search engine?
I'm more inclined to believe the official statement that it was a mistake (i.e. item went on sale at some point but got updated wrong in the Bing index).
Maybe the shop was truly giving an higher price but that's a totally absurd practice. I would have understood if they had given a price that with the 2% cashback was the same than without (the price appears the same to the costumer and the shop cashe
Instead of complaining, game the system. (Score:5, Insightful)
Find out what sites go higher and what sites go lower in quoted prices. Fake a cookie to maximize savings or delete it altogether if it gets you a uniformly higher price.
That's the behavior I'd expect from /. . None of this Newsweek / Dateline NBC alarmist "They're using COMPUTER MACHINES to scam us!!!" Get on it, people.
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Find out what sites go higher and what sites go lower in quoted prices. Fake a cookie to maximize savings or delete it altogether if it gets you a uniformly higher price.
That's the behavior I'd expect from /. . None of this Newsweek / Dateline NBC alarmist "They're using COMPUTER MACHINES to scam us!!!" Get on it, people.
Bing cashback developer goes into boss' office tomorrow:
You know boss, I've been doing this analysis of our system, and I've figured out a way to game the system.
Boss: "Good work coder Dude! For that, you won't get axed this month!"
I would think that MS developers may occasionally read this site.
Re:Instead of complaining, game the system. (Score:4, Insightful)
There! He knows that clearing his cookies solves the problem. Why all this bullshit about being tainted for three months and being afraid to use their service to write a bloody blog post? Does he think the "oh noes teh bing cookeez" are going to trash his blog and kill his hamster too?
He knows, but most people have no idea what cookies are, much less how to "clear" them. So, after reading the article, now you know how most people are getting screwed by some vendors claiming they are getting the customers a discount going through Bing when in fact it could be costing them money.
Also, now that you know, and if you would consider getting Bing cashback at some point in the future, you'd be likely to check if the vendor was charging you more just because you arrived from Bing.
Does everything have to be spelled out for you?
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Also, now that you know, and if you would consider getting Bing cashback at some point in the future, you'd be likely to check if the vendor was charging you more just because you arrived from Bing.
Does everything have to be spelled out for you?
I have no problem with him pointing out the discrepancy and calling Microsoft on it. That alone would have been a huge story. What is completely unnecessary is:
1. Your condescending trollish post; and
2. His overblown Bing bashing
Pointing out the pricing difference? Great catch and a good story. Claiming he's afraid to even write the blog post because of the Bing cookie? Come on...
Disclaimer: TFA author works for a bing competitor (Score:5, Informative)
I read the article; the author works for Bountii which also directs users to places to shop for things. What the article describes is one retailer specifically inflating prices of things when a user comes from Bing. That same retailer could just as easily do the same for links from the author's own site, Bountii. They even go as far to state "At Bountii, we do our best to make sure we always show the lowest available price at a store." It just seems a bit disingenuous to me I guess.
So 'ButterflyPhoto.com' is slime; thanks, got it.
Slimy Bountii (Score:5, Interesting)
And to top it off, he's a competitor. Pretty slimy.
Re:Disclaimer: TFA author works for a bing competi (Score:5, Informative)
Not surprised, camera shops are one of those things that are commonly operated by scammers. Camera scammers tend to give you a low price for the camera, but try to make you pay extra for the battery that was already included. Sometimes they sell units with no domestic warranty (gray market), and sometimes they won't sell you the camera unless you buy extra warranties or extra accessories. If you refuse to buy the things, they might just not sell it to you. Or just take your money and run.
Check this shop's ratings at resellerratings.com: http://www.resellerratings.com/store/ButterFly_Photo [resellerratings.com]
Credit Cards? (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds like the hidden credit card tax. Everything you buy is a few cents extra to cover credit card costs. Then you get "rewards" for using your card. Meanwhile everyone else gets 'gypped' 2 cents. Yes, it is different, but still similar.
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A few cents?!? If only... card processing fees are several percent of the transaction, so for a $100 item, try several dollars extra.
Laws/card processor contracts prevent merchants from adding a surcharge if you pay with credit card, but they do allow giving you a discount if you pay with cash. Anytime you're making a large purchase, bring this up with the cashier, asking for a manager if necessary.
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Laws/card processor contracts prevent merchants from adding a surcharge if you pay with credit card
There are no such laws, besides ones that require accepting local currency as legal tender. Contracts are another story.
Anytime you're making a large purchase, bring this up with the cashier, asking for a manager if necessary. If their card processing fee is X%, ask to have an (X-1)% discount for using cash.
If it is really a large purchase, both of you should feel safer with a credit card transaction. You know, them not having to worry about the guy behind you in line knowing that they now have $2K in the register. You being able to dispute the charge if the item is not as advertised.
Re:Credit Cards? (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reminds me of Amazon (Score:4, Informative)
That wasn't exactly it, Amazon was testing different price points for items and set a cookie to make sure once your price point was set it remained. However some people noticed if they cleared their cookies they would get a lower price sometimes. The people who got a higher price didn't really have much to say about it. In the end everyone got charged the lowest price even if they thought they were paying the higher price.
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Re:Reminds me of Amazon (Score:4, Informative)
I never heard of that. Besides, why would Amazon need to rely on a browser's cookie to identify returning customers when Amazon requires customers to have an account with them and be logged in before purchases are made?
Because if simply logging in or out changed the prices, you'd know right away something was amiss. If it was cookie-driven, then it would not rely on you having to login and Amazon could always show you the inflated price regardless of your login status.
Re:Reminds me of Amazon (Score:5, Funny)
Come on, it's obviously the store that's shady (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with Microsoft. From the article: Butterfly Photo set a three month cookie on my computer to indicate that I came from Bing.
So, a disreputable web site is setting a cookie when you click on a sales link. How is this Microsoft's fault again? What does this have to do with Bing?
A/V and photography stores are notorious for ripping off customers, both in-store and on-line. Surprise surprise, you can find these disreputable sites using search engines. Trying to blame this on Bing is like trying to blame your phone book for recommending a sketchy car mechanic.
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Well, Microsoft might have tried a little harder to secure their system.
How? What do you think this is, constructive criticism!?
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They aren't even suppressing this article! They suppressed a previous article where he meticulously detailed a flaw in the cashback system without giving MS a chance to fix it.
This whole thing is ridiculous and nothing but anti-Microsoft / anti-Bing bashing.
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This whole thing is ... nothing but anti-Microsoft / anti-Bing bashing.
I don't see a problem. ;-)
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They're supressing the article that should really land the guy in jail. Since he confessed to something that every court in the land would class as stealing or worse "computer hacking".
The first thing that came to mind... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The first thing that came to mind... (Score:5, Insightful)
Always check prices (Score:3, Informative)
I worked for a national healthcare system which offered a Dell employee purchase program. My wife wanted a pink laptop, and I quickly found out I could get a better deal on a regular "sale" from Dell than the "12% employee purchase program discount" could ever give me. They're scams, which attempt to con people into thinking they are getting a deal.
Always compare prices. All sales and discount schemes are meant to deceive you.
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The two are not mutually exclusive.
Its common for companies not to bother to fix problems that just happen to work out in their favor.
Sprint's cell phone division was well known for not giving a crap about their atrocious billing system because frequently the errors were in their favor and the only way for a customer to get them corrected was to go through voice-mail hell.
No surprise ... price variations based on cookies (Score:5, Interesting)
No surprise ... price variations based on cookies ... is old news. I remember reading about how cookies resident on the user's machine can cause different quoted prices to appear years ago ... probably five years ago at least. I was able to test it at the time using two browsers with different cookie loads. It's definitely happening. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was a /. story years ago that first mentioned it.
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When you go to Dell and click through as a home user vs a small business, the prices are different for the same machine!
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"When you go to Dell and click through as a home user vs a small business, the prices are different for the same machine!"
Yeah, and my residential phone line costs $25.00/month while my business line costs $120.00/month. There is no discernible difference in service level between the two.
WTF Verizon?
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A/B split testing is very common practice in ecommerce, for everything from site design
soo... (Score:5, Funny)
Did anyone else notice the story submitter's alias links to a sex toy shopping site?
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Did anyone else notice the story submitter's alias links to a sex toy shopping site?
If that's what makes him happy.
Maybe he doesn't know that all subby links are tagged rel="nofollow"
Re:soo... (Score:5, Funny)
Nice catch. Most interesting.
You deserve a cookie.
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Yeah, but you never know how much a cookies going to cost you...
Name change required, and all will be fine (Score:4, Funny)
My top suggestions are:
Badda-BING
and
Kerr-Ching
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Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just had occasion to visit a Microsoft developer's website earlier today. Very rare event, believe me.
After browsing, I always clear out my cookies.
I went nowhere near the Bing "decision engine." But lo and behold, there was a cookie for "bing.com" in my cookie cache before I cleared it.
So, is Microsoft inflating Bing's numbers? Visit any Microsoft site, and you get a Bing cookie counted as a search on Bing? What gives?
Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? (Score:5, Interesting)
MSDN's search is powered by bing. So... no surprise?
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I wonder how you reached that conclusion. The ranking websites which announce results periodically, do not use cookies AFAIK.
Could it be Microsoft uses Bing embedded as frame or whatever inside Microsoft owned websites for search functions?
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In the case of bing, I really don't see a big deal about it at the moment. Bing cookies are benig
So basically it's that old "I'm taking 10% off"? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'm pretty sure this will remain SOP as long as people are dazzled by "SALE!!! Umpteen percent off!!1!"
That is, forever.
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Why would you leave out names of companies who pulls this kind of shit?
It might be a bad apple but give potential buyers an idea what to look out for should they be in the market for similar products.
isn't this a problem with the retailers websites? (Score:2)
Retailers have always done this (Score:2)
Much as MS can't be trusted this isn't a new trick.
You don't seriously think that the shoes reduced from $300 to $100 this week only were ever really selling at $300 do you?
The answer is easy, never deal with retailers who will try to deceive you. Sadly that doesn't leave you with too much choice.
Is this news? (Score:2)
Point be
About the message that got taken down (Score:3, Insightful)
That's for the fake transactions exploit. (Score:5, Informative)
You went to all that trouble to transcribe the PDF without reading the summaries noting that it had to do something else entirely? The takedown letter was for explaining a mechanism to post fake transactions to Bing Cashback [db.org], which could reasonably be described as telling people how to exploit Bing for money.
This is completely separate from telling people that merchants charge Bing customers more.
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It shouldn't cause people to disagree with the part of my post that compared Microsoft to Best Buy with respect to price-fixing given the discovery outlined in TFA.
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It's the whole of humanity, not just "your country" (which I assume is the US if you automatically assume that he's from the same country as you).
You are perpetuating things by still thinking of things in terms of "sides". "Same side" (whatever that may refer to, presumably you mean "being American vs everything that is not American") or not.
I agree that that way of thinking is stupid and blinkered though.
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Re:Transcribed PDF from Microsoft Legal (Score:5, Informative)
I’ve never bought anything using Bing Cashback, but the balance of my account is $2080.06. Apparently, I placed two $1 orders on January 24th of this year, and spent another $104,000 on October 24th. Let’s see how these transactions might have “accidentally” got credited to my account.
First, we need to try to figure out how transactions get into Bing Cashback. Microsoft posted some documentation here. The explanation of how a merchant reports transactions to Bing starts on page 20. Merchants have a few options for reporting, but Bing suggests using a tracking pixel. Basically, the merchant adds a tracking pixel to their order confirmation page, which will report the the transaction details back to Bing. The request for the tracking pixel looks something like this:
https://ssl.search.live.com/cashback/pixel/index?
jftid=0&jfoid=<orderid>&jfmid=<merchantid>
&m[0]=<itemid>&p[0]=<price>&q[0]=<quantity>
This implementation, while easy for the merchant, has an obvious flaw. Anyone can simulate the tracking pixel requests, and post fake transactions to Bing. I’m not going to explain exactly how to generate the fake requests so that they actually post, but it’s not complicated. Bing doesn’t seem to be able to detect these fake transactions, at least not right away. The six cents I earned in January have “cleared,” and I’m guessing the remaining $2080 will clear on schedule, unless there is some manual intervention.
Even if Bing detects these fake transactions at some point in the future, the current implementation might have another interesting side effect. I haven’t done enough work to say it with confidence, but a malicious user might be able to block another user’s legitimate purchases from being reported correctly by Bing (I only tried this once, but it seemed to work). Posting a transaction to Bing requires sending them an order ID in the request. Bing performs a reasonable sanity check on the order ID, and will not post a transaction that repeats a previously reported order ID. When a store uses predictable order ID’s (e.g. sequential), a malicious user can “use up” all the future order ID’s, and cause legitimate transactions to be ignored. Reporting would be effectively down for days, causing a customer service nightmare for both Bing and the merchant.
Based on what I’ve found, I wouldn’t implement Bing Cashback if I were a merchant. And, as an end user and bargain hunter, it does not seem smart to rely on Bing Cashback for savings. In our next blog post, I’ll demonstrate some other subtle but important reasons to avoid using Bing Cashback.
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Re:Doesn't work for me (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here, I get the lower price with or without cookies. Seeing as the article was written by a Bing competitor it's a way for them to get exposure.
* Step 1: Write article saying M$ is evil /.
* Step 2: Submit story to
* Step 3: Profit!
Doesn't matter if it's true or not