- The Honey browser extension helps people save money on their purchases by providing coupon codes when checking out of an online store. Users can earn money from their purchases through its PayPal Rewards (previously Honey Gold) program, as well. The app also alerts users when the price on their favorite items drops.
- Honey collects a lot of user information, including your IP address that they use to determine your location. To keep such information private, we recommend using NordVPN.
- NordVPN will spoof your IP address and make you appear to be in another location, and it also encrypts and secures your connection. Using a VPN when exchanging sensitive information like passwords, credit cards, security codes and billing addresses is highly recommended when online shopping.
Continue to read the article below to learn more about Honey, how it works and how to download the extension step-by-step. Also, you’ll learn about the data Honey collects about you, what it does with it and how you can protect your privacy.
The Paypal Honey browser extension checks the internet for active coupon codes and discounts on the products you’re about to buy, so you’ll never spend too much. Sounds useful, but is Honey as amazing as it sounds?
In this article, we’ll tell you more about Honey, how it works with online shopping, how to download the Honey free browser extension, how they make money, and how this free money-saving app treats your data and privacy.
What is Honey?
Honey, owned by Paypal, is a mobile app and browser extension that helps you save money as you shop online. The money-saving app searches the internet for existing coupon codes with better deals for the products you’re searching for. Besides cash, the Honey app saves you time from searching for individual coupons yourself.
For instance, when you go to the product page for the item you’re interested in on Amazon, Honey will “light up” on your browser’s toolbar with available coupons and discounts from other shopping sites and merchants.
With the click of a button, you get the best available deal for the product from over 40,000 alternative merchants that have partnered with Honey. The Honey app promises users they’ll save an average of 17.9 percent annually on purchases. For the products we searched for, like a Samsung SSD hard drive, we averaged savings of 2 percent.
While Paypal Honey is an excellent way to save money, it does collect a lot of personal and private information, including your IP address — which can be used to pinpoint your exact location. By using a VPN, you can mask your true IP address, encrypt your connection, and protect your info. Of course, when exchanging credit card numbers, billing addresses, and other private data with sites, having a VPN protect your connection is also a must.
How the Honey Extension Works
Honey makes several changes to your internet experience. Firstly, it adds buttons to the web pages you visit, most notably online stores. With these buttons, you can save a particular product to your “droplist.”
This means Honey will keep checking the price of that product and notify you if it drops below a certain point, so you’ll be able to buy it when it’s cheaper.
For example, on Amazon, Honey will check whether you’re getting the best available price for a particular product. The reason is that the same product is uploaded to Amazon multiple times by different vendors with different prices.
Honey will always find the cheapest option, so you won’t have to go out looking for it yourself.
Even beyond Amazon, Honey will be able to help you out. Once you’ve filled your shopping cart on an online store and find yourself at check-out, click the Honey logo in your browser.
Honey will find you the best coupon codes. Honey now has over 17 million members. How did they get this successful? And how do they manage to cover costs if the app is free? We’ll go more into that later.
How to Install the Honey Browser Extension
Honey has browser extensions available for Google Chrome, Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari using the App Store. Here’s how to install the Honey Chrome extension.
- Visit joinhoney and click “Add to Google Chrome.” You can also search the Chrome Web Store for “Honey: Automatic Coupons & Rewards.”
- Tap “Add to Chrome” on the Chrome extension page. Then, in the pop-up, confirm you’d like to download the extension.
- You’ll be redirected to the Honey app’s signup page once Honey is installed. Here, you can choose how you’d like to sign up for the service.
- Once you sign up, the Honey extension will be activated, and the “h” Honey icon will appear at the top (toolbar) of your browser.
Alternatively, you can visit the Google Play Store to download the Honey Android app for your phone. The Honey app is also available for iPhone users via the Apple App Store.
How to Use Honey
It’s time for the exciting part: saving money! Honey has partnered with over 40,000 retailers, web stores, and other merchants. They include Amazon, Apple, Macy’s, Newegg, and many more. Here’s how to use Honey.
- Navigate to the online store that has listed the product you’d like to buy. We used Amazon.com as an example.
- Search and click on the product you’d like to purchase. We searched for a projector.
- Tap on the orange Honey logo (“h”) at the top (toolbar) of your browser. If the logo is dull grey, it means the store is not a Honey partner.
- The Honey extension will test different coupon codes (if available) for the product upon checking out.
- Honey will automatically apply any available coupon code to your order.
As you can see above, we found some excellent savings by using Honey. Below, we discuss other Honey extension features that will help you save even more money.
Droplist
Are you a true bargain hunter? Then Droplist is for you. Droplist is a Honey app feature that alerts you when your favorite item(s) price drops. It works in the background and monitors the products you’ve added to your cart, like on Amazon.
It can monitor for price drops for 30, 60, 90, or 120 days.
Honey will send you an alert via email once the price of an item drops to the amount you set. However, it’s good to note, Droplist does not factor in additional costs like tax or shipping. Also, Droplist only works on some sites.
PayPal Rewards (Honey Gold)
Honey Gold rewards program was rebranded to PayPal Rewards in 2022. The rewards program takes “saving money” even further by rewarding you for your purchases on its partner sites.
PayPal Rewards partners include Apple and Walmart. In addition, the Honey app gives you the best deal for a product and rewards you with Honey Gold Points on selected online purchases.
Customers can redeem their points for cash, gift cards, and PayPal credits. However, it’s good to note you need a minimum of 1,000 Honey Gold Points to be able to redeem.
In addition, you can access deals with cashback rewards right inside PayPal by clicking on the “Deals” tab.
Is Honey Safe?
Honey promises never to sell your personal data. One could argue that “personal data” doesn’t cover all the data they gather: is information about the products you buy or look for actually personal?
This info, also called metadata, can be very valuable. The fact that Honey uses it to show you personalized offers and a tailored experience already attests to this.
Honey’s privacy policy and data sharing
Still, according to their privacy policy, Honey doesn’t sell this information. They can, however, share it with different parties, including:
- Their service providers: This helps them in maintaining their products, marketing, legal issues, security protection, payment processing, and so on.
- The stores you buy from: They will need your shipping information to be able to send you your purchased product (but only when you’re using the Honey Mobile App).
- Their parent company: Since Honey is now owned by PayPal, it and its affiliates and subsidiaries could have data on you.
Apart from these, Honey also notes it might also share information with other parties when they’re required to by law. They might also share anonymized and aggregated data with others to analyze their own service.
A final mention they make regarding this topic, is that they might share information “when [they] believe in good faith that it’s necessary to protect [their] rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, or investigate fraud.” Although this statement is likely intentionally vague to cover any unsuspected situations, it also gives Honey plenty of room to share user data in case they wish to.
All of this information can be found in the company’s privacy policy, which is openly available on its website. Honey collects and shares quite a lot of your information, which could be a problem if you value your online privacy. However, Honey is at least open about their policies.
What Does Honey Know About You?
So what does a free extension like Honey actually know about you? What kind of information do they collect? We looked into it, and to make their service function, Honey collects quite a bit of information about users. After all, it needs to know where you are online to provide suitable discounts.
However, because Honey has grown to become much more than a simple discount finder, they gather a lot more user data, namely through cookies. When you install the extension, you see the following screen, encouraging you to create an account.
If you choose to create a Honey account, the app will be able to gather more information about you. What exactly do they know?
In their privacy policy, they mention collecting both personal and technical information, as listed below.
Personal information
- Your login, if you choose to use it (including your email, username, and password)
- Any personally identifiable information you opt to share on your profile, such as your name, social media links and profiles (if you log in with your Google or Facebook account, they’ll be able to look at these accounts, but only if they’re publicly available)
- Any communication with Honey through email or via other means
- Bank or credit card information, if provided through the Honey Mobile App or Honey Pay
- Items you add to your Droplist
- Coupons, promo codes, and deals you shared with Honey
- Friends that you refer to Honey
- Stores you choose to follow using the Honey tracker
Technical information
According to Honey’s privacy policy, here’s the technical information they collect about your device.
As you can see, much of the personal information they gather depends on whether or not you share it with them. The more you share, the more influential the app will be and the less privacy you’ll have.
Sometimes the data they collect is anonymized and aggregated to help them analyze their services.
On the flip side, Honey promises never to track your search engine history, emails, or your browsing on any site that isn’t a retail website. On pre-approved retail sites, Honey will collect information about that site (the retailer’s name and page views), pricing, and availability of items.
They might use this information and the information they have gathered about you to give you personalized recommendations, such as showing sponsored product offers. In other words, they track your shopping habits and adjust your online shopping experience accordingly.
Is Honey Spyware?
To get to the bottom of this, we investigated the matter ourselves. Some people fear that Honey might be spyware. Spyware is a form of malware that infects your computer, smartphone, or other device and gathers information on you.
Spyware spies on you as you use your device, tracking your browser history, download history, any personal information such as login data and bank details, and your emails.
Usually, spyware will significantly slow down your device. Since the malware is constantly logging everything you do, it’ll use up a lot of working memory. Browsing, streaming, and clicking around will all take significantly longer. When we installed Honey, this wasn’t the case.
To make sure, we looked into the active processes on our computer to figure out whether Honey’s software was active in the background of the device.
The spyware verdict
In short, the Honey app is not a form of spyware. Though it does collect your data, as mentioned above and in its privacy policy, it’s nothing out of the ordinary.
Honey will consume more of your computer’s memory when it is active. This means that the app is saving information about your online shopping behavior, as it’s known to do. While this practice impacts your privacy, it isn’t necessarily wrong.
After all, by using Honey, you agree to allow it to track your online movements and check all online stores. The extension builds a profile from your data, which they use to personalize your experience. That’s why the amount of memory of the extension grows.
How Honey Makes Money
Any successful business has a financial strategy: a way in which they make their money and are capable to continue to exist. Honey’s strategy has to do with commissions and affiliates.
Their partners, the sellers whose discount codes you use, pay them a commission when a Honey member buys something using a promotion code. In other words, if you purchase something from Amazon using Honey’s code, Honey will earn money from Amazon. Here’s a statement from their website.
This way, they claim, they’re able to keep Honey free without selling any of their user’s data.
The Honey browser extension is more than a simple database for Honey coupon codes. Many websites, shops, and other businesses have struck deals with Honey.
These deals, resulting in commissions for Honey, create the extension’s most significant income. In other words, the codes used by Honey aren’t just general codes you pick off the internet. Instead, they’re active promotions that help the people working at Honey make a living.
Honey App Alternatives
PayPal Honey is one of the best discount hunters in the market — but it’s just one of many money-saving apps. We’ve discovered that using the Honey browser extension with one or two similar apps can dramatically raise the money and time you save.
Honey app alternatives may have coupons for products Honey app doesn’t, or they may have better deals on products you’re interested in compared to PayPal Honey. Below, we’d like to discuss alternatives to the Honey app and the benefits of each.
1. Shopper
Shopper Extension is a browser extension that helps users find the best deals and discounts while shopping online. It is available as a free download for the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers.
Once installed, the Shopper Extension can automatically find and apply coupons and promo codes from over 40,000 online retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, and Target. It also provides cashback offers for certain retailers, allowing users to earn money back on their purchases.
In addition to coupons and cashback offers, Shopper Extension also provides price comparison tools, allowing users to compare prices for a particular product across different retailers. This can help users find the best deal and save money on their purchases.
2. Rakuten.com
The Rakuten browser extension helps you save money while shopping online. Rakuten, formerly known as Ebates, is an e-commerce site that offers cashback to its customers for shopping at participating stores. With the Rakuten browser extension, you can earn cashback without having to visit the Rakuten website.
The Rakuten extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari browsers, and it alerts you when cashback savings are available while you’re shopping online.
The Rakuten browser extension also finds coupon codes for you while you shop online. If there are any available discounts or coupon codes for the store you’re shopping at, the extension will automatically apply them at checkout, helping you save even more money.
The extension scans the sites of thousands of retailers and displays a notification when cashback is available at a particular store.
One thing to note is that while Rakuten is free to use, the company does collect data about where you shop and what you buy, which some users may find concerning. In this case, we advise using NordVPN to reap the benefits Rakuten has to offer without losing control of your privacy.
3. RetailMeNot
RetailMeNot is a website and mobile application that provides coupons, promo codes, and other discount offers for various retailers and online stores.
This platform features 500,000+ coupons and offers from 50,000+ retailers in various categories, including clothing, electronics, home goods, travel, and more. Users can search for discounts by retailer or category and can also sign up for email alerts to be notified of new offers.
It’s free to use, and RetailMeNot earns revenue through advertising and affiliate partnerships. Retailers and brands can partner with RetailMeNot to promote their products and offer exclusive deals to users.
In addition to coupons and promo codes, RetailMeNot also provides cashback offers for certain retailers. Users can earn cashback by making a purchase through RetailMeNot’s website or mobile app and can withdraw their earnings via PayPal or gift cards.
4. Capital One
Capital One is a shopping app that helps users save money while shopping online. It allows users to share successful coupon codes with the rest of the community.
The Capital One browser extension also alerts you of price drops on your favorite products. In addition, users can also earn “Shopping Credits” with select Capital One partners.
Shopping Credits are earned when you purchase products through Capital One and are redeemable for cash or other products.
Final Thoughts: Shop Privately With Honey App
Honey’s money-saving app is one of the most popular of its kind. The service is aimed at finding the best, most relevant discounts for its users. It also has a cash-back system, where users can earn back part of the money spent on new products using Honey.
For Honey to be able to function, it has to gather certain personal data. You can opt out of sharing most of this data, such as your email, social media, and other sensitive information. For a regular user, however, Honey will use data to adjust and personalize your shopping experience.
When it comes to privacy, Honey isn’t the best extension to use. If you want to stay anonymous online or simply don’t wish to share your shopping habits with others, we would advise you to use a VPN with Honey.
NordVPN, for instance, will mask your IP address and other personal information that Honey collects about you. In short, you’ll reap all the benefits Honey has to offer while keeping your personal details private.
Check out the articles below for more shopping safety tips:
Do you have particular questions about Honey extension? Check out the FAQ below for answers to common questions.
Yes, Honey is 100% free. To get started, download the Honey browser extension for your favorite browser i.e. Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Opera, and Mozilla Firefox. Honey works on Windows and Mac through supported browsers. Honey makes money from the merchants they’ve partnered with to provide you with deals.
Honey is legit. The app has over 17 million monthly users worldwide. It’s also partnered with over 30,000 merchants to bring you the best available deals. Honey app helps users save time and money by providing them with coupon codes for products they’d like to buy. It also alerts users when the price of an item they’re interested in has dropped. Overall, Honey saves you time by scouring the internet for coupons, and all you have to do is apply the code when checking out of an online store. According to Honey, it helps users save an average of $126/year.
Yes, Honey keeps tabs of the websites you visit and the products you look at in retail websites. This allows Honey to provide you with the best possible discounts and matching coupon codes. Honey app also requires you to sign up for an account, and collects details about the device you’re using such as IP address, type of device, and so on. You can learn more about the information Honey collects about you in our complete Honey browser extension privacy guide.
