Alphecca: Bye-Bye SiteMeter

March 21, 2007

Bye-Bye SiteMeter

SiteMeter (what was the little rainbow colored icon at the bottom of my pages) has been a very useful tool for me. It let's me quickly know how many readers I have and if I'm being linked by bloggers and other sites.

However, I have always valued you, my readers, and the other day I noticed (since I study my pages as they load) that there was a new source being loaded along with the SiteMeter external calls. The reference was to an outfit called SpecificClick. Don't bother looking for a website for them. It's spyware, or at least "tracking ware" being used by SiteMeter.

It's not the most evil of spywares but all the same. . . It places a tracking cookie on your computer. While not inherently dangerous, it is there to report on your surfing activities. Here's a description:

Specificclick cookies store information about a PC user’s interaction with a specific website. Standard Cookies are not inherently dangerous, but they can be misused and exploited and may allow a distinct and apparently unrelated website to access the same information. If more than one website can access a cookie that has been placed on the user’s PC, that cookie poses a security and privacy risk. Tracking cookies can allow vendors to analyze browsing behaviour for marketing purposes.

Now, maybe SiteMeter has been doing this all along, but I only noticed it yesterday. I've removed SiteMeter from all the index and archive pages from Alphecca although I haven't yet cleaned the really old, pre-MT pages.

I'm taking tomorrow off from work and will clean off the SiteMeters from my other websites as well.

Am I over-reacting? Probably. But I still have my Hosting Matters statistics I can use and besides, with over 1300 visitors a day (when "top-dogs" aren't linking to me) I'm pretty secure that I'm being read. I'm also aware that there are probably a hundred such cookies from other companies on my computer but this is one that SiteMeter is planting and I won't be a part of it.

Alphecca will not be used as a tool to plant tracking software in your computers. I value your privacy. Most browsers allow you to eliminate unwanted cookies and I suggest that you use yours to eliminate and block the SpecificClick cookies.

Posted by Jeff Soyer at March 21, 2007 07:24 AM

Comments

Some of us paranoid bastards don't allow those kinds of things anyway. I use SiteMeter as well but I'll check to see what's going on in the background myself and dump them if I'm doing the same.

Posted by: Robb Allen at March 21, 2007 07:41 AM

Well spotted. I use adaware and spybot to root the little buggers out. Sods.
Keith

ps: on the other hand, "if we're not doing anything...." I'm still not giving them disk space on my machine, Mr Gates' Obeseware (tm) already uses too much of it.

Posted by: keith at March 21, 2007 08:14 AM

Keith

My response to the "If you're not doing anything wrong" is "If I'm not doing anything wrong then there's no reason for you to be watching, is there?"

Posted by: KCSteve at March 21, 2007 01:03 PM

Apologies, I was being ironic. i grew up in what has become a 4th world dictatorship, where there is no written constitution and individual rights are and mean whatever the dictator at the time says they are and mean.

That dictatorship is the most monitored society on the planet and the justification for the snooping (which the old east Germany and pre '89 Romania would have been proud of)is:

"if your not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about"

Unfortunately "wrong things" to the dictatorship mean something completely diferent to what the bulk of a democratic society would expect.

Posted by: keith at March 21, 2007 02:05 PM

I was contemplating dumping it on performance issues. I think it was causing my blog to load very slowly. You just pushed me over the edge. Sitemeter is history. That's kind of sad because it was interesting.

Posted by: Syd at March 21, 2007 02:34 PM

Just found this from a fellow son of the dictatorship. True, he'd probably go to gaol in the US, but for not paying for a licence and transfer taxes. If youve not seen it b4, its worth a look.
Keith.
http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/readthis.shtml

Posted by: Keith at March 21, 2007 04:09 PM

Good catch on the cookie Jeff.

For the security minded, some quick references:

If using FireFox, set it to delete cookies when the browser is closed. It would be nice if FireFox had a setting to disallow third-party cookies like IE does.

I also use a program called "CrapCleaner" every time I close the browser to clean all the net stuff (and much more). It can be found at http://www.ccleaner.com/.

Steve Gibson has a very informative cookie page with IE tips at: http://www.grc.com/cookies.htm.

Posted by: Magus at March 21, 2007 04:14 PM

Jeff,

AVG caught that the first time I hit sitemeter and I blocked Opera against third party cookies.

I have had no problem after that.

Posted by: Old Dog at March 21, 2007 05:26 PM

As I recall, Luby did go to jail for building a test unit of one of his designs. I don't know that the full-auto aspect effected the sentence. You will note that the photos of the .22 pistol show one built in the US with a rifled barrel and no suppressor, so as to avoid class 3 issues. In any case, his designs are useful as ultimate evidence that guns cannot be eliminated.

Posted by: triticale at March 21, 2007 11:05 PM

If you'd like a great alternative which strongly respects your privacy, I'd recomend GoStats.com (started as a hobby of mine back in 1999). You may even find some useful features which sitemeter did not provide.

Posted by: Richard at March 21, 2007 11:43 PM

Richard, I'm going to check it out today or tomorrow and maybe make the switch.

Posted by: Jeff Soyer at March 22, 2007 07:38 AM

I got here via Uncle. Thanks for the heads up! Just dumped sitemeter for GoStats.com.

Posted by: Civis Proeliator at March 23, 2007 01:00 PM

I've switched to GoStats. Lot's of useful info in the free version.

Posted by: Jeff Soyer at March 24, 2007 04:04 PM

Try StatCounter!

Much prefer it to sitemeter.

Posted by: jc at March 25, 2007 08:58 AM

Far as I know, specificclick is a division of Specific Media. The cookies are used for marketing purposes and to gather info on your behaviour and trends.

Think it's shocking that Sitemeter has sold out like this.

StatCounter was approached by Specific Media to do this and COMPLETELY REFUSED.

Try www.statcounter.com instead. Basic package is free. And it's better than sitemeter anyway.

Posted by: jd at March 25, 2007 09:30 AM

Note: Comments close down on posts after seven days and then
the comment input form disappears.

Your comments are welcome. You don't need to enter a URL and you don't need a "valid" email address, either. Note though that MT Blacklist is installed to flag suspiciously spam-like strings. Unfortunately, because of the bastard spammers, the strings "google.com" and "yahoo.com" (even in your email address) are currently banned as well. So are strings such as "cialis" (a common spam) which rules out words such as "socialism". Try putting a hyphan in a word like that.

By Golly, you're reading an archived post. Click Here to head to the main page and read current stuff...

Into science fiction? Check out my group blog novel, Colony: Alchibah.
See the reader's guide there for first-timer tips.

Alphecca

Check it out: My group sci-fi blog novel: Colony: Alchibah

March 21, 2007

Bye-Bye SiteMeter

By Golly, you're reading an archived post. Click Here to head to the main page and read current stuff...

Check it out:

My group sci-fi blog novel:

Colony: Alchibah