Folks,
A few months back, StatCounter was approached by an advertiser, offered lots of $$$, and asked to include a spyware cookie on all of our member sites…we refused on the spot.
You install StatCounter to track visitors to your site NOT to open yourself and your visitors up to being spied upon by phantom advertising corporations.
It appears, however, that other players in the world of webstats were happy to take up this offer…
We were shocked to discover just today that another well known stats provider is allowing up to 9 cookies to be installed in the browser of every visitor that hits one of their member websites. This means that the provider is making money by transmitting data on you and your visitors to a third party advertiser. Not only that, but to add insult to injury, the cookies are causing the member websites to load very slowly too.
In light of this, StatCounter wants to assure you that we track your visitors for you, only you and not any one else.
Which provider would you prefer??
By the way, welcome to our new blog 😉
I have been using your service for some time and it is very reliable and informative – so much so that although occasionally I have installed other stats stuff I always take them out again because yours does just the job. Your pages are not “in your face full” of advertising. Its a good solid service which I would thoroughly recommend to anyone else. Your refusal to be drawn into this kind of “spyware” arrangement convinces me that my judgement about you was correct.
I have been using StatCounter for 2 years and I feel it is probably the BEST in the world. I do use other services as well but again StatCounter is comparatively fast, easy to understand and it provides a complete set of data which helps me understand, analyze quickly. It has an excellnt customer support team too.
Thanks StatCounter for refusing the offer !
StatCounter is far and away the best statistics service on the web – you all are awesome and your users appreciate it!
Thanks so very much! It’s good to see your integrity at work here. I will likely upgrade to a paid account in appreciation!!!
You guys are the best! Thanks for informing us of this… I know alot of companies went bad (Kazaa) with all this spyware. Thanks for keeping your users in mind!! 🙂
Thank you. Your attitude towards and respect for your users, along with your second to none service illustrates perfectly why Statcounter is as good as it gets.
You can believe me because we had sitemeter on three sites and it was emitting the dg.specificclick.net/jensondemo cookie on all those sites. We had to get someone from our host to remove sitemeter from all pages. That counter continues to emit that spy cookie and people do not like to read a page through a spyware iframe. Some of the larger bulletin board hosts are now sending out warnings to people to remove the java version of that counter. I wish we had those warnings because it took time and effort to source the spyware to that stats counter. I also saw people report the matter to yahoo because it was on their yahoo hosted sites. It was a stupid thing to take that money because the complaints are so strong that customers are rushing to abandon that meter. Ironic that their upgraded version promises no ads lol in their control center but I suppose sending malware onto websites is fine. We do not have blogs but the hosts of some blog sites are now asking that users remove that meter.
Can statcounter cope with all the extra customers you will get?? Your competition getting in with spyware has pushed you way up there to be the most popular counter on the www.
To “i do not believe you”:
Would you believe someone who has been a StatCounter customer for 3 years?
Thank you SC!
Thank you, fellaz @ statcounter!
Sorry, I do not believe your statement to the least.
Thank you!
Hi all, i have a news site, and i am featuring this article on my site.
Thanks stat counter for keeping us safe!
Jaffet
www.jaffet.com
YOU GUYS ROCK!
Love, love, LOVE your countere…it is the best free counter out there by far.
And am very glad to read here and in other research I have been doing that you do not deposit spyware. I started the research part because BOTH Spybot and Ad-Aware are identifying StatCounter as spyware in their cleanups. I’m glad to find out that these are false-positives.
HOWEVER….how can users on my site who find the statcounter info appearing in their spyware cleaners be reassured? Can you give some official report link from an outside source that can be quoted? Would appreciate it greatly.
StatCounter Team Response:
Hi Zionfire,
I’ve just sent a message to you (re the above) via the contact form on your site. Hopefully it will be of assistance!
Thanks!
I must take my hat off to you. It’s nice to know that not only do I receive a free stat counter that provides excellent analytics but now I’ve been convinced that the management of Statcounter operates their site with the highest ethical standards.
Thank You for taking a positive step in saying no to advertisers who spam and spy.
Thanks statcounter for keeping your site (and mine) clear and clean from spyware. Otherwise I’d be stuck without a decent statistical service =]
Thanks again and keep it up.
How ironic. Just today our virus protection found a spyware program placed there by what I thought was a reputable game vendor (BigFish so watch out). I never dreamed that any reputable company would do that. Thank you so much for your integrity. Your counters are incredibly reliable and easy to use too!
Thanks for havin’ our backs! I started with a free account and moved to a paid one after I saw the benefits. Glad I didn’t go with Site Meter.