Phia, the shopping plugin co-founded by Phoebe Gates, the daughter of Bill Gates, and entrepreneur Sophia Kianni, has been accused of misconduct.
The company, which launched in 2025 and classifies itself as a “personal shopping assistant,” is a browser extension that compares prices and discovers discount codes for fashion items.
The app has raised $43.5 million from a number of celebrity investors, including Paris Hilton, Khloé Kardashian and Sydney Sweeney and is reportedly valued at $185 million.
However, last week, Bloomberg, independent researcher and consultant Ben Edelman and Capital One Shopping — also a browser extension — shared alleged evidence of misconduct after conducting testing.
According to Edelman’s findings, Phia appeared to be “materially out of compliance with network and merchant agreements.”
Bloomberg also tested the mobile browser extension across over 50 websites and found that during checkout, the app automatically opened a background tab and injected its own referral code, overriding publishers’ referrals.
Since the release of the test findings, affiliate platform impact.com has suspended the company from its network. Bloomberg reported that Awin is also reviewing the allegations.
Last year, a similar controversy unfolded when Honey, the PayPal-owned browser extension, was found to have been hijacking affiliate links. The company was subsequently removed and suspended by a number of networks, but has recently rejoined Rakuten Advertising’s network after implementing its stand-down SDK. However, lawsuits related to the scandal are ongoing.
In this case, Bloomberg shared that a Phia spokesperson acknowledged the situation and once notified of the issue, the company had been working to “identify, mitigate, and has since resolved the issue.” Bloomberg confirmed that when it retested independently, the override had ceased.
This latest controversy follows scrutiny over Phia’s collection of user data last year. According to Fortune, cybersecurity researchers found that the browser extension had been collecting sensitive user information, with “full copies of every webpage a user opened,” which were allegedly uploaded to Phia’s servers.
A Phia spokesperson responded: “All versions of Phia, current and previous, performed logging in an aggregate and anonymous way for the purpose of identifying and discovering new retail websites.”
They added that this was used to determine when to appear and to “identify and support additional retailers as they were discovered.”
At the time, the Phia spokesperson said it only logged URLs, and has never “in the past, or at present stored this data.”
