Is there a way to hide your affiliate ID?

If the wrong person goes to my website and looks at the sourcecode, and followed my redirect/iframe code, they'd be able to get my affiliate ID and report it to my affiliate company. What I don't know are the chances of that actually happening and if there is a way to prevent it from happening entirely. If I encrypted the affiliate url, I suppose that would add another layer of difficulty, but it would still be easy to find simply because the browser needs said url to display the content.

Am I being ocd or is this a legitimate thing to worry about?

You can hide your affiliate ID superficially by using an outclick redirect script, eg. turning your outlinks into something like youdomain.com/out/affprogram1 or yourdomain.com/click.php?site=affprogram1. You could use pretty much click counting script, Brad's CPA redirector etc. This is a good idea in general IMO because it makes your outlinks look cleaner and hides those long, messy affiliate urls.

However it's impossible to hide your affiliate ID from a skilled hunter because it's all there in the browser headers if they care to look. If you want to get credit for sales, you have to send your affiliate ID at some point.

If you are generating a lot of complaints then either modify your promotional techniques, or find an affiliate program that will play ball and eat the complaints for you.

That eases my mind a bit. I think I already have your suggested precaution in place using CPA Redirector 2. I suppose I'll just finish up my site and hope for the best unless another response pops up suggesting otherwise.

Thank you

Code monkey said:

If the wrong person goes to my website and looks at the sourcecode, and followed my redirect/iframe code, they'd be able to get my affiliate ID and report it to my affiliate company. What I don't know are the chances of that actually happening and if there is a way to prevent it from happening entirely. If I encrypted the affiliate url, I suppose that would add another layer of difficulty, but it would still be easy to find simply because the browser needs said url to display the content.

Am I being ocd or is this a legitimate thing to worry about?

Click to expand...

a iframe will hide it from most.