StatCounter Says NO!

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??

StatCounter says No!

By the way, welcome to our new blog 😉


1,030 Comments

  1. Pingback: StatCounter Says NO to spam advertisers! « Tons of Fresh News
  2. Definitely much appreciated. There are few clean souls on the internet when it comes to advertising.

    Thanks!

  3. THANK YOU! It’s so nice to hear that some people care about others and still have online morals!

  4. Thanks for saying no.

    As a webdesign company, we deal with a lot of websites for other companies, so having a stat counter which has spyware is an excellent way to lose clients.

    I think that if we had of done that we would have had to leave your services and go to another, less able stats provider.

    I for one am glad that you have said no on a moral basis. As a free stat counter, free things often have advertising on (Which I click on relatively regularly), which I don’t mind, but to have somthing which actively damages the product – no way!

  5. My english isn’t very well, but I’m wondering about that email.

    So I had delete the StatCounter … after that

    StatCounter Team Response:

    Sorry Martin – we’ve no German speakers here at the moment.

    If there ARE any German speakers out there, it would be great if you could translate the ‘StatCounter Says NO!’ message for Martin.

    I think he may have picked up the wrong idea from our email.

    Thanks folks!

  6. Exelente decisión han tomado.
    Como usuario me gustaria que publiquen un post en este blog, informando como descubrir si otros servicios utilizan o no, spyware.

    Gracias

  7. To an earlier response, cookies are usually just information tracking on one site but the cookie now on sites that use another stats counter (no name given) are more than simple cookies. I checked my temp internet files after loading a page on one of the sites hosting the other web counter and there was a lot of unusual stuff in my browser. There was something called a demo which was a type of program.

    Thans to statcounter for being ethical and caring!

  8. YEAH!!!

    Freedom
    By Jimi Hendrix

    You got my pride
    hanging out of my bed
    You’re messin’ around with my life
    So I bought my …
    You even mess with my children
    And you’re screamin’ at my wife, baby
    Get off my back,
    if you wanna get outta here alive

    Freedom, give it to me
    That’s what I want now
    Freedom, that’s what I need now
    Freedom to live
    Freedom, so I can give

    You got my heart
    speak electric water
    You got my soul
    screamin’ and howlin’
    You know you hook my girlfriend
    You know the drugstore man
    But I don’t need it now
    I was trying to slap it out of her head

    Freedom, so I can give
    Freedom, yeah
    Freedom, that’s what I need

    You don’t have to say that you love
    if you don’t mean it
    You’d better believe
    If you need me
    or you just wanna bleed me
    you’d better stickin’ your dagger in someone else
    So I can leave
    Set me free

    (Yeah)

    Right on, straight ahead
    Stay up and straight ahead
    Freedom

    Cheers!
    Mike

  9. Thank you for saying no. Statcouter provides a wonderful free service – better than the “stat” given by our service provider. I recommend Statcounter to everyone who asks me how best to keep track of site traffic. It is the best I have ever used.

    Congratulations on the new blog too. It is nice to see it.

  10. Congratulations to your decision. Next step if installed an additional cookie without informing a company which uses a paid stats service would be definatel a legal action.
    Keep on the professional service.

  11. I’ve had a counter from statcounter.com for the last 2 weeks now and since I discovered it and told my friends at uni and they’ve all put one on their site now!

    When I first read this email I thought “what the hell is this??” Then I read it and was very pleased with what I was reading.

    The first thing I showed my friends when I told them about the counter was the geographical location of the hits I was getting. Not only were we surprised to see people from Thailand visiting my blog, but the fact that we knew where they were from and when they visited my site totally blew everyone away!

    Thanks for such a great FREE service!

  12. Just read your email update and want to thank you for not falling to the call of advertisers promising big bucks. In the long wrong it would have been disaster, as it will be for those who did accept the $$ and the cookies once their members find out! Thanks for sticking to cyber ethics and keeping your product clean and useable for all. I for one will tell everyone I know where to go for their counters! Your program is wonderful and I love it!

  13. Good job saying ‘No’ its nice to see a company that places their service and standards above a dollar. Care to disclose the name of this advertising compant that appriached you?

    StatCounter Team Response:

    Sorry Bpunk.

    We don’t want to use this blog for naming and shaming anyone!

    Thanks for your post.

  14. No matter if it’s true or not, thanks for the great service. This is the web counter I always refer.

    Keep up the good work, it’s well appreciated!

    StatCounter Team Response:

    It’s completely true Tupperfan.

    We rejected the deal offered because we simply could not betray our members. Simple as that.

    Great to hear you like the service!

  15. And why should we be believe this? I won’t until you name the other provider.

    But you’ve already managed to convince enough naiive people. Well done.

    StatCounter Team Response:

    Hi Pac,

    Obviously we can’t make you believe us, but we hope you do.

    As we’ve said before, we don’t believe in bad mouthing the competition so we won’t be naming names.

    Thanks for your post!

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