Gates' daughter knew about Phia ‘Cookie Stuffing’, report cites internal chats
Phia's founders reportedly knew about software claiming unauthorized sales commissions for months. Internal records suggest this practice, known as cookie stuffing, was active since December. This contradicts the company's public statement blaming a sudden software bug. The alleged strategy generated a substantial portion of the company's daily income. Following feature deactivation, Phia's…
Bill Gates' daughter, Phoebe Gates, and co-founder Sophia Kianni were allegedly aware of a software feature called "cookie stuffing" at Phia, a personal shopping startup. This practice involved inserting tracking cookies into shoppers' checkout sessions without any user interaction, claiming unauthorised sales commissions. Internal Slack messages and source code reviews revealed that the company had been utilizing this tactic since at least December.
Contrary to Phia's claim on July 8 that they only discovered the issue within the last 24 hours, the internal chats indicate they were aware of the issue months earlier. The unintended attribution resulted in a significant portion of the company's daily revenue, with an analysis estimating that unauthorized cookie insertion accounted for around 51% of the total merchandise value claimed in June.
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