This feature is designed to block affiliates from earning commissions from their own sales/purchases. What we will do here is check the email address from the order and the customer IP address against the affiliate database. If we find a match, we’ll block the commission. This feature comes with some caveats. It is not 100% fool proof. For instance, let’s say the affiliate joins with one email address and places an order with another. A match will not be found. While this would be fairly rare, you can see its not a silver bullet feature. Already the percentages are quite low where affiliates try to earn from their own marketing link. Combine that with this attempt to block basic link usage and we can drop the percentages of commissions for affiliates using their own link to a very low number. One other thing to consider here would be if you ever have a situation where an affiliate places an order on behalf of a customer, using their own link. This feature would block that commission from being created in which case you might decide not to use it.
