Phia accused of ‘cookie stuffing,’ taking affiliate credit on purchases it didn’t earn

A shopping browser extension backed by Bill Gates' daughter, Khloé Kardashian, and Hailey Bieber has been caught stealing credit for sales it never influenced. Bloomberg's investigation reveals Phia quietly opens a background tab when users visit retailer sites — even if they arrived through Wirecutter or another legitimate affiliate — then swaps the referral code at checkout to claim the commission. This is cookie stuffing: a parasitic technique that turns other publishers' audience-building work into Phia's revenue.

The mechanics are brazen. A user clicks a Wirecutter link, browses, decides to buy. At the moment of purchase, Phia's extension wakes up, strips Wirecutter's cookie, plants its own, and collects the affiliate fee. Wirecutter did the editorial work. Phia did the extraction. The user never knew.

Impact.com suspended Phia within days. That platform sits at the center of the affiliate ecosystem; its verdict carries weight. Yet Phia's spokesperson calls the matter resolved. Bloomberg checked and agreed the specific behavior stopped. But "stopped" and "trusted" are different verbs. Retailers and affiliate networks now face a choice: believe a startup that built its model on interception, or protect the partners who actually drive traffic.

We've seen this script before. Honey, owned by PayPal, faces a class action lawsuit for the same scheme. The allegations there mirror Phia's: background tabs, cookie overrides, commissions harvested from thin air. Honey's scale is larger — millions of users, years of operation — but the architecture is identical. The industry treats this as an aberration. It looks more like a playbook.

Phia raised over $40 million in 2025. That capital bought engineering talent, celebrity credibility, and distribution. None of it bought the traffic Phia claimed. The startup's value proposition — "find the lowest price" — masks a business model that monetizes other people's traffic acquisition. The extension presents as a consumer tool. It functions as a toll booth on someone else's highway.

The celebrity investors matter not because they guarantee success, but because they signal legitimacy to consumers and partners alike. Gates. Kardashian. Bieber. Those names open doors. They also impose responsibility. When a Gates-backed company hijacks Wirecutter's cookies, the reputational splash radius extends beyond Phia's cap table.

TechCrunch asked for comment. Phia didn't answer. Silence is a strategy — sometimes the only one left when the facts are documented by a major business publication and verified by independent consultants. The "fix" may be technically complete. The trust deficit remains open.

Affiliate marketing only works when attribution is honest. Publishers invest in audiences expecting that when those audiences convert, the commission follows the referral. Cookie stuffing breaks that contract. It converts affiliate marketing from a performance channel into a game of who controls the browser at the final millisecond. Phia chose to play that game. Impact.com ruled it a foul. The retailers watching now decide whether the scoreboard resets.