[greo]

Although this is annoying in the sense that they did this secretly and feels fishy, is this fundamentally worse than what google is doing ? Google sell user data to external companies but people are fine with it. I actually don't think this is a huge problem, to use their referral link for a price to use their product seems not so bad.

[amelius]

But from the viewpoint of those who pay for the referral, it is fraud. This is in fact very similar to click-fraud.

[greo]

yeah that's true, since those people were headed to the website anyway.