Wow, that was weird.
My friend Keith got an email from Ebates about the Ebates 14% Valentine’s Day sale, and he forwarded it to me as a heads up. Many hours later, I went through Ebates and made some purchases to take advantage of the increased portal offer.
This morning, I decided to check if the cash back posted yet, and I noticed that the name showing on my Ebates account was ‘Keith,’ not ‘Chuck.’ When I had clicked Keith’s email link, the browser had me cookied into his account, and HE got credit for all 25 purchases I made. Why, oh why, do these things always have to happen on big purchases.
Lucky for me it was a friend’s link, so no money loss. But wow, this was a surprise to me. And Keith was sure surprised to see dozens of random Ebates credits popping up in his account.
Ebates won’t let you see the other person’s personal info, and if you try clicking on My Account it prompts you to login. BUT to go shopping, it doesn’t force you to login first (which is great, by the way, since it saves time when shopping). Logging into your account will clear out the old cookies and get you back to your own account.
I used to use incognito for shopping, but then I discovered ‘super cookies’ which carry over in private browsing and negate part of the benefit of using incognito. Since then, I started taking it easy and shopping within my main browser, and I’ve had great success with tracking.
Well, now we have a new reason to use private browsing. I recall noticing a similar thing with MyPoints and maybe Swagbucks too. Keep this in mind.
I should really set up a separate Chrome profile, just haven’t gotten around to it since I’d have to save all the passwords there again.
