Complaints about the startup company Phia The Phoebe Gates, daughter of Bill Gates, whom he co-founded with Sofia KianiThey're pretty serious.
Accused of using practice «cookie stuffing» to credit online sales even when consumers did not use its service.
According to Bloomberg, internal messages and corporate data show that the two co-founders They knew for months about functions leading to overrecording supplies, although in July Phia had announced that she was informed of the problem just now «in the last 24 hours».
Phia detects discount codes in electronic stores. When the consumer uses a password, the software places one «cookie», to record that he contributed to the sale and received a commission.
The problem, according to Bloomberg, was that Phia allegedly placed cookies even when consumers did not use the service, resulting in credited sales that it may not have caused.
Repayment of supplies to partners
Lawyer Ariel Givner reported that the «cookie stuffing» may be treated by the American courts as electronic fraud, an offence that can bring up to 20 years in prison, along with fines and damages.
According to Bloomberg, practice has been reportedly applied at least since December to sales by large companies, including Nike, Gap and Nordstrom.
The company argues that the functions causing incorrect sales performance were withdrawn on July 7 and that it has begun to examine all transactions and return supplies to the affected partners.
At the same time, he announced that he was moving on to hiring head of compliance, in order to prevent the repetition of a corresponding incident.
Source: Bloomberg
