# Browser extensions and portal tracking

> Honey, last click, and why my portal browser has nothing installed.

- Published: 2026-09-26
- Topic: Portals
- Web version: https://churing.com/posts/extensions/
- Hero image: https://churing.com/img/extensions.jpg (Riso-print illustration: puzzle-piece extensions grabbing at a shopping cart in one browser window, next to a clean window with a lone cart.)

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Portal payouts depend on the store and its affiliate network attributing your purchase to the portal. A later affiliate interaction can replace an earlier one, depending on the network’s attribution rules. Cookies are part of that process; “the last cookie always wins” is too broad.

Dunno about y'all, but when I do tech troubleshooting for family members, they often have a pile of browser extensions installed, and many of them are... let's say, 'janky' - redirecting searches from a reputable search engine to some janky one, siphoning off data, etc. Some of the shadiest behavior, though, came from one of the most popular extensions out there.

Honey is the example that made this problem famous. MegaLag's 2024 investigation alleged that the extension replaced existing affiliate attribution at checkout, including when it had no useful coupon to offer. That matters to anyone expecting a portal payout. [Watch the original video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk).

Honey is the famous case, but the lesson is bigger: for portal shopping, you want to be as trackable as possible, with no janky extensions in the mix. A stock browser with its privacy protections turned off is ideal, because privacy tools are anathema to portal tracking. What I do:

**1\. Keep a browser profile that's only for portals.** Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari all support separate profiles. Use no extensions on this browser profile: no ad blocker, no coupon finder, no password manager popping up offers.

**2\. On Safari, turn content blockers off.** The quick version is Settings > Websites > Content Blockers, set to Off for the portal and the store. That usually works, but not always: when you click from a portal to a store, the click often bounces through one or more ad network sites along the way (you may see the address bar flick through a few sites while the page stays blank), and those in-between sites aren't covered by a per-site setting. The sturdier fix is to turn your content blocker extensions off entirely in your portal-only profile - AI can help you set this up.

**3\. Check for blocking at the network level too.** If you've set up anything on your home network to block ads and tracking (which I highly recommend for everyday browsing), it's blocking tracking domains for every device on your Wi-Fi - including the ones portals rely on. The best-known example is a [Pi-hole](https://pi-hole.net), a free network-wide ad blocker that usually runs on a Raspberry Pi. It's great for everyday browsing and terrible for portal tracking. The same goes for NextDNS, ad-blocking routers, and VPNs with a "block trackers" setting. Pause them or allowlist the portal and the store before you shop. (Another topic for another day, but if you plug a Raspberry Pi into your computer and give Codex or Claude Code control of it, AI can set up a Pi-hole for you with minimal fuss.)

The goal is the opposite of everything else I (you?) do online: make yourself as trackable as possible.