SiteMeter is Spying on Blog Readers
Not that anyone would necessarily notice, but I’ve removed all SiteMeter tracking from the site. See, the blog was loading slowly, so I started running some tests, looking over everything with a fine-toothed comb. That’s when I found a rather conspicuous entry: a cookie from specificclick.net.
I did a search on the address, and found a number of blog posts all saying the same thing: on or around March 25, 2007, SiteMeter quietly accepted an unspecified amount of money and, in return, started embedding specificclick.net cookies into the pages of almost every SiteMeter account holder.
To date, the SiteMeter crew has said nothing about this outside of a few blog posts—nothing about specificclick.net is mentioned on SiteMeter.com, except for a vague “we’re adding new features” bit o’ hype that fails to mention how the new features are going to be collected.
Shane over at AskShane.org said it best:
- Admit you screwed up.
- Say what you’re doing to fix it.
- Offer some kind of appropriate compensation.
Because SiteMeter has used me to infect y’all’s computers, it’s the least I can do to point you to something that’ll show you how to remove specificclick.net cookies and block them forever.
April 27th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I hate cookies in general. I especially hate them when they pull this kind of nuisance thing and start acting like worms. Thanks for the update.
Oh, I also added you to my blogroll. Thought it had been there all along. Massive oversight on my part.
Blessings.
April 27th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Dan,
I was pretty shocked with the sorts of statistics (Gender? Age? Whether they prefer Pets to Dating and Relationships?) they seem to be gathering with these cookies.
As much as that info would be interesting to have on hand, I don’t think that’s the way to gather it from my readers.