A few months ago I signed up with ROI Rocket and was trying to promote one of their survey affiliate programs. I got a few people to sign up and wanted to signup myself. I didn't use my affiliate link because I didn't want to get in trouble. For some odd reason their system had a cookie that remembered me and still gave me credit for signing up myself! My friend also tried signing up through my computer and my account was once again was credited a commission! If I was a company that hired ROI Rocket, I would be pretty pissed to learn that their system can be cheated so easily. It's been a while though since this incident occurred so maybe they fixed their system.
No offense, but with the approval of my affiliate manager, I tried to do a SMALL offer to make sure it credited on CPA Storm today, it did right away.... I think it has to do with the fraud controls in place, I bet that it might of set off some flags on their end.
The money is still in my account. However, I believe the program that I was promoting is no longer active.
A lot of programs via Commission Junction and other top affiliates will let you signup for an offer once without tracking it as fraud. However, if you do it multiple times - it's clear there's a pattern and their system will catch it. So i'd just be careful and you won't have problems. You mentioned the cookie and unless you clear them, there's no way it wouldn't be tracked if you have clicked one of your own links. That's how the tracking works...