Quit bugging me! Many online affiliates are being bitten by software that wrongly credits Web site referrals. Are you a victim?(Net Profits)

SMALL ONLINE MERCHANTS WHO ARE members of the Web's affiliate marketing programs are becoming concerned about a relatively new technology referred to as parasiteware, which credits the wrong party when online stores tally commissions for Web referrals. In typical affiliate transactions, consumers click on a link from a Web site that points to a product on a merchant site such as Amazon.com. If a customer decides to buy the product, Amazon pays its affiliated Web site operator a commission for the sale, which is usually 5 to 15 percent of the purchase price.

Now, some online merchants are noticing they are not getting their commissions. Why? In some cases, parasiteware overwrites, intercepts, appends to or changes a performance marketing tracking link so that credit is registered to a third party for whom the link was not originally coded.

A user often unknowingly downloads the parasiteware since it usually piggybacks on top of popular programs such as those used to download free music. For example, parasiteware overwrites the cookie settings of different ad network scripts or overwrites browser helper objects integrated into browsers. Some companies with parasitic applications keep their techniques proprietary.

The music download sites do not operate these parasitic applications themselves--instead, they usually contract with a third-party company that specializes in online shopping. The parasiteware can generate revenues for software publishers through pop-up ads or by generating affiliate links for that publisher when the user visits a site with which that publisher has an affiliate relationship.

"Basically, with parasiteware, people are manipulating technology to make money," says Shawn Schwegman, director of affiliate marketing at Overstock.com, a Web shop in Salt Lake City that has thousands of affiliated Web sites receiving commissions for directing customers to its site. "Sometimes in doing that, they are taking dollars or commissions that other people, especially smaller companies, would have generated."

Schwegman says that while smaller affiliates are concerned because they are not getting their commissions, merchants are also facing a burden because many of them have had to deal with upset affiliates and threats of boycotts since parasiteware popped up about two years ago. According to Haiko de Poel Jr., CEO of Abestweb.com, an ...