Stealing affiliate links?

People use this expression with different meanings, and in different contexts.

There's quite a lot of misunderstanding about it, actually. Especially among ClickBank affiliates who are promoting products connected with internet marketing itself (sometimes a thankless task indeed, for obvious reasons). Some people imagine that if subscribers to their lists, who are themselves already ClickBank affiliates (as many are, of course, in that "niche") follow one's link to a ClickBank product they want to buy, and then create and buy through their own hoplink to it, instead of buying through the one sent, that that's "stealing". (It isn't, of course, according to ClickBank).

What sometimes baffles me, in that regard, is that some affiliates appear to imagine that "cloaking their hoplinks" is some sort of "answer to that". Or even that "preventing affiliate theft" is the main reason for cloaking one's hoplinks. (It isn't, of course: there are many other good and valid reasons for doing it, but that doesn't happen to be one of them).

The reality is that (in the case of ClickBank) one's affiliate-name is going to show up at the bottom of the order-page, however one has concealed the hoplink. It has to, for you to be paid. So the idea that you can somehow "prevent" this from happening simply doesn't hold water at all.

But that's an example of what some people mean, and are referring to, anyway.