AFFLIATE LINK CLOAKER

I'm one of those that, most of the time, use an affiliate link cloaker. The purpose of an affiliate link cloaker is to hide your affiliate ID that is in your hyperlink. This is supposed to protect your commissions by keeping other people from replacing your ID with their own.

A very popular cloaker is http://tinyurl.com. I use http://www.cloakreferer.com/generate-link.php. Both are really easy to use but some times I wonder if I'm wasting my time.

I wonder how well do they really work? I always test out my links to make sure they are working properly. Sometimes, the address URL of the destination site is simply www.xxxxx.com. In those cases, the cloaker works just fine.

But other times the address URL displays as www.xxxxx.com/refid=xxxx. So even though I've 'hidden' the affiliate ID in my hyperlink, once my lead gets to the site, there is the ID for all the world to see. So taking the time to cloak my link accomplished absolutely nothing.

Seems to me that the only way to really cloak your ID is if the destination web site is coded to not display it. Otherwise, it doesn't make any difference what one does.