1. The PayPal Honey Lawsuit & "Last-Click" Theft

A major class-action lawsuit (amended in January 2026) alleges that the PayPal Honey extension has been systematically stealing commissions from content creators and affiliate marketers.

• The Tactic: Honey is accused of using "last-click" attribution to its advantage. Even if a user clicks your affiliate link to visit a site, the extension detects the merchant and instantly replaces your tracking tag with its own at the final second before purchase.

• The Defense: PayPal argued in court that users "consented" to this when they downloaded the extension, but the industry fallout has been massive. In January 2026, the Rakuten Ad Network officially terminated Honey from its platform, citing affiliate fraud and unauthorized link substitution.

• The Lesson: If your referrals have dropped but your traffic is the same, your visitors likely have extensions installed that are overwriting your ID.

2. 2026 Malicious Extension Surge

Beyond Honey, researchers discovered a cluster of 29 malicious Chrome extensions in January 2026 specifically designed for "Affiliate Injection."

• The Extension Names: These often masqueraded as innocent tools like "Amazon Ads Blocker," "Youtube Download," or "Google Translate in Right Click."

• What they do: They silently monitor your browser for affiliate URLs. The moment they see an ID that isn't theirs (like yours for CashJuice), they swap it.

• The Impact: Over 840,000 installations of these extensions were identified. This means there is a high statistical chance that a percentage of the traffic you're sending from safelists has these "parasite" extensions running.

3. The "Rotator Refresh" Technique

If you are using a link rotator (common in safelist marketing), you are currently at a higher risk because rotators use 301/302 redirects, which are easily intercepted by modern hijacking scripts.

How to perform a "Refresh" to bypass these scripts:

• Change the Path: Stop using the same "dead" URL. If your rotator link is mysite.com/cashjuice, change the slug to something completely different like mysite.com/team-builder-7. This forces the hijacking extensions to "re-learn" the redirect path.

• Update the "Hops": Many hijackers look for specific redirect patterns. By adding or removing a "hop" (e.g., using a LeadsLeap tracker inside your rotator instead of the direct link), you break the bot's ability to predict the final destination.

• Cloak with Purpose: Use a "Bridge Page" rather than a direct redirect. A bridge page requires a human click on the page. Hijacking extensions often trigger on automated redirects but fail when a user has to physically click a button to move forward. 

• The Plan Is  Working - Traffic + Team Pay https://lllpg.com/fxyr77vd/