Phia co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni were aware of their shopping app’s cookie stuffing scheme for at least seven months starting in December 2025, according to a Bloomberg investigation published August 11, 2026, contradicting earlier claims that the practice was discovered only after reporters reached out.
Cookie stuffing is a deceptive affiliate marketing tactic in which tracking cookies are secretly placed on a user’s browser without consent, allowing a fraudster to claim credit for sales they did not drive. In Phia’s case, the browser extension would open a hidden tab during checkout and inject its own affiliate code, overriding referral links from other marketers and retailers, and potentially capturing commissions it had not earned.
Bloomberg’s reporting, based on leaked internal Slack messages and sources familiar with the matter, shows that Gates and Kianni discussed the practice with other executives and engineers. The leaked messages indicate the founders pushed for the features that enabled cookie stuffing. When the practice was first reported in July 2026, Phia’s spokesperson told Bloomberg the company was only made aware of the issue when reporters reached out. The company later described it as a coding glitch, but the new evidence suggests it was a deliberately built feature that could be switched on and off.
The scale of Phia’s cookie stuffing was significant. According to the ALREADY_RETRIEVED source, cookie stuffing accounted for a substantial portion of Phia’s reported sales, and the company experienced a sizable drop in daily revenue once it stopped using the mechanism. The affected retailers included major brands such as Nike and Nordstrom.
In response, Phia was suspended from Impact.com, a leading affiliate and influencer marketing platform, in July 2026. The company stated it removed the features causing misattribution on July 7 and pledged to issue transaction reversals to affected brand partners and hire a head of compliance. The startup has also faced additional scrutiny: in July 2026, Puck reported that Phia had lost nearly half its full-time staff since the start of the year and that several brands were unaware they were listed on the app.
The Honey Precedent and Regulatory Stakes
Phia’s cookie stuffing scandal echoes a parallel case involving PayPal’s Honey browser extension. In December 2024, YouTuber MegaLag exposed the Honey extension for allegedly hijacking affiliate links from content creators, a practice identical to cookie stuffing. Honey is now the subject of ongoing class action litigation. PayPal secured multiple court victories, with the most recent dismissal occurring in November 2025, but the case remains active. The Honey scandal resulted in the extension losing over 4 million users by mid-2025, according to reports, and Google subsequently updated its Chrome Web Store policies to ban similar practices.
Phia launched in April 2025 with the promise of being a more effective Google Flights-style platform for shopping, helping users find the lowest prices across retailers and discount codes. The startup raised over $43 million and attracted high-profile investors including Khloé Kardashian and Hailey Bieber. The founders, Gates and Kianni, were both named to TIME100 Next in 2025, underscoring their prominence in the startup world. The cookie stuffing revelations represent a significant blow to the company’s credibility and raise questions about how such practices could have persisted for months without external disclosure.
Sources
- Bloomberg — Reported that Phia co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni pushed for cookie stuffing features and were aware of the practice for at least seven months starting in December 2025, based on internal Slack messages and sources.
- ECIKS.org — Documented the Bloomberg investigation findings, Phia’s response, the Impact.com suspension, and the Honey precedent with PayPal.
- The Verge — Covered PayPal’s Honey browser extension cookie stuffing allegations, the December 2024 exposure by YouTuber MegaLag, and the ongoing class action litigation.
- Chargebacks911 — Explained cookie stuffing as a form of affiliate fraud and noted that cookie stuffing can be prosecuted as wire fraud.
