Don’t let the cookie monster eat all your rakeback
Our sign up pages stress that it is important to clear your cookies before downloading any poker software using one of our affiliate links. Let us explain why…
If you are familiar with cookies and know their purpose then you can skip the next paragraph. For everybody else, here’s a brief intro to the world of cookies.
Cookies are employed when you use your browser (eg. Internet Explorer) to visit web sites on the Internet. Cookies store information about you in a text file on your computer hard drive, and web sites retrieve that information to identify you in the future. Cookies are widely used and are good for speeding up browsing or customising web sites for you. A good article explaining cookies in more depth can be found here.
So what do cookies have to do with my rakeback I hear you ask.
Well, most of the online poker rooms employ the use of cookies to track information about visitors to their site. Part of this information includes whether the visitor has been referred by an affiliate of the poker room. If the visitor downloads the poker software and deposits money the affiliate may be entitled to some commission – cookies are used to identify this and track referrals from affiliates.
So it’s highly likely that as you are reading this now, you have several cookies on your hard drive from various poker rooms that you may have visited. If you have ever visited a poker room via an affiliate, or an affiliate link, you will almost definitely have a cookie linking you to this affiliate.
So there’s the background and the history lesson, now consider this scenario which highlights why we strongly recommend you clear your cookies before using our download links.
You visit another rakeback affiliate site (there are many to be found by typing ‘rakeback’ in Google) and have a look around. You see a rakeback deal with Pokerplex that you like the look of and click the download link to download the Pokerplex software. As the software is downloading, you continue to have a look around various rakeback sites. You come across RakebackDeals UK and see that we offer 2% more than the deal you’ve just seen. You cancel the download and use our link instead, installing the software and creating a new Pokerplex poker account. You don’t clear your cookies before doing so and a week later you have had no confirmation from us and are not accumulating any rakeback.
Why is this?
What has happened is that a cookie was put on your computer containing the first affiliate’s details. For some reason when you have used our link the cookie has not been updated with our details. Your new account is then tracked to the original affiliate and we never see you on our account. This is a very simple, black and white, example and reality may be quite different but it illustrates the point. Cookies can be stored on your computer for years so it could have been sat there for a very long time – you might not ever remember visiting the site.
The reasons for the cookie not being updated are numerous – there could have been a security problem, network problem, firewall problem, anti-virus problem. Several things can cause the block and the upshot is that your account and rakeback will be going to somebody else. This other affiliate will probably never notice themselves, and if they did they would have no idea where the account has come from. They will treat it as a bonus!
Clearing cookies is easy and should take a few seconds :-
In your browser select ‘Tools’, then ‘Internet Options’ and then under ‘Temporary Internet Files’ on the ‘General’ tab click ‘Delete Cookies’.
Some poker rooms will allow player accounts to be switched on request. Most however will not – if you don’t show up on our account, ‘tough’ is the answer from most sites. This is why we stress that clearing cookies is advisable as it keeps the cookie monster happy!