Internal communications and software records at Phia, the personal shopping startup co-founded by Bill Gates daughter Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, indicate that the founders were allegedly aware of software features designed to claim unauthorised sales commissions at least seven months before the company publicly blamed the practice on a sudden “software bug.” Citing internal Slack messages and source code reviews, Bloomberg reports that the practice, which is known in the affiliate marketing industry as “cookie stuffing”, was active as early as December.