Ask Shane – SiteMeter Sending Your Readers’ Data to Specific Media
StatCounter emails its members of this news sometime last week:
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 doing that, StatCounter informed its members that StatCounter respects privacy and have strong ethics – it didn’t accept $$ from the 3rd company by selling its members info. Also, it’s a catch 2 birds with 1 stone for StatCounter. Right now, more people are canceling their accounts in SiteMeter (including me) and switching to StatCounter. This is a clever reaction to get more publicity, support and trust.
Richard, everything spreads fast online. CB links to Statscounter while you link back to GoStats. How do the people who are using such services know for sure that the companies are not selling their info?
Hi MJ, Yes, without stat counter, the entire blog world would still be able to get this message out. (not to mention, with more accurate information too) Do you trust stat counter to be the most open and honest about site meter to give people an educated decision?
I have a hunch that “CB” above is actually from stat counter. Not too mention his/her response is carefully crafted to be misleading. (hmmm, where does the URL that CB provided point to?) It looks like an ethically questionalble move from stat counter.
Had StatCounter not reassure its members, would the public still know that another company agreed to sell its members info?
There are certainly some companies, maybe most, that do not go the way of SiteMeter and they are keeping it quiet. They could be having a really comprehensive software to track visitors but StatCounter combined marketing and ‘informing members’ to get more publicity.
Hi MJ,
I’m a loyal supporter of Statcounter and I think it’s really bad form of this guy above to be bad mouthing them.
I’d be worried about using HIS service if the best he can do is go around trying to down other people.
He’s not worried about Statcounter getting publicity – he’s jealous.
Here is what StatcounterJen had to say on Digg:
“We’re not naming the competitor because we don’t believe that is good practice.
But there’s no big secret about this! The info is out there. Some of our members told us about it.
This was never intended as a publicity item – we just wanted to reassure our members.
If we just wanted publicity on this, why didn’t we post about this months back when we refused the offer? The only reason this became an issue is because one of our competitors has gone down this route. Which makes our refusal a bit of a selling point.”
Hi MJ, I’m from GoStats another web counting service. GoStats may not be the most well known, but we are growing steadily. While we are also approached regularly by spammy deals, we always quietly decline. I’m a bit worried that stat counter is getting so much publicity from making an obvious decision. It seems fishy. I think there is a gray area on both sites (stat counter and site meter).
Sometimes things aren’t so simple.