I am one of the developers of Honey, a popular Chrome extension with 700K+ users. The focus of that thread was the vulnerability of any browser extension to exploitation to bad actors. Ruan posted a separate reddit “Ask Me Anything” on r/IAmA on 18 January 2014. (Honey’s privacy policy is outlined here.) Happy to answer questions you guys may have. We DO NOT sell or share your data in any way. Honey makes money by getting a commission from merchants and then giving a portion of it back to our user as cash back. In order to give our users cash back on their purchase, we need to know that a transaction happened so we can match up the records with merchants. This is the only way to appear ONLY when you are on the checkout page.
In order for Honey to automatically apply coupons on the checkout page, we need to know what page you’re on. Honey saves people money in 2 ways: 1) automatically applying coupons on the checkout page and 2) giving you extra cash back with every purchase. George (founder of Honey) here to clarify why we need this data in order to do what we do. Not long after the thread was posted, founder George Ruan addressed the claims in a comment explaining the manner in which Honey finances both its operations and its rebates and denying that user data is ever sold to or shared with third parties: Concerns about the nature of Honey and its safety emerged in Reddit’s r/frugal on 23 June 2016, when a poster claimed that the extension “sends data about the sites you visit to their servers attached to a session ID which can identify all of that data back to you.” The possibility of savings and refunds in the form of gift cards prompted understandable questions about how Honey’s developers can afford to run the extension and compensate users for certain purchases. Some purchases result in a points bonus called “Honey Gold,” which can be redeemed for dollar amounts credited to gift cards for stores such Amazon, Walmart, Target, eBay, Nordstrom, and Sephora. As an extension running in the background, it automatically prompts shoppers to check for any active coupons in its database during most checkout processes, and it can also can product prices for long-term planning of purchases, enabling its users to monitor pricing trends with very little effort. On the surface, Honey performs a few primary functions for users in the course of online purchases. In October 2012, the MIT-trained entrepreneur, along with co-founder George Ruan, used that prototype to build and launch Honey, a web browser extension that automatically finds and surfaces coupons when a user is online shopping. That night, after the kids went to bed, he put together a prototype for a browser extension that could help solve his problem. “I thought, there’s probably a coupon that could save me $1, and that matters right now.” “That’s part of why I was in a couponing mindset when I was buying that pizza,” Hudson told Business Insider.
#SHOP TAGGER SERIAL#
Money was tight for the serial entrepreneur, and cost-saving measures were nothing new: He had recently called up every one of his utility providers, from his cable company to his internet provider, to cut $200 from his bills every month. Over five years ago, Ryan Hudson went online to order a pizza - dinner for his two kids, who were then under 6 years old.
Once Honey is installed, you will see the Honey icon in the top right corner turn orange on Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Edge when you’re on a shopping site that is supported by Honey.īusiness Insider profiled the Honey browser extension’s creator and the inspiration behind the app: We’re adding these features to international Honey members soon, so stay tuned!
We also instantly find better prices on Amazon and offer Honey Gold at many stores for our U.S.
#SHOP TAGGER FREE#
Honey is a free browser extension that automatically finds and applies coupon codes at checkout for over 30,000 shopping sites. The service’s developers have described the basics of the extension and how it works with online shopping as follows: I want to know id the honey app extension is a scam or not to save money online shopping Is the app Honey a good tool to save money or is it a scam It’s supposed to search site like Home Depot or Amazon for the lowest price when you find an item you decide to purchase. Is the Chrome browser add-on called “Honey” for real. The browser extension Honey has been around since at least 2013, but we regularly receive questions from readers asking whether it’s for real (rather than a form of scam):