Open Letter

[lostcarpark]

Dear Web Counter Provider,

I have been using your service since 1999, and have been very happy with it up to now.

However, I recently have received complaints from visitors to my website that my site was generating pop-up ads (or more specifically, triggering the pop-up blockers on their browsers). This confused me, as I have never put pop-ups on any of my sites.

At first I thought it might have been something my webhost or Domain registrar, but after some investigation eliminated those, leaving only one possible source: the JavaScript component of your counters. As an experiment, I took the counter off a page, and the pop-ups immediately stopped.

It is with some regret that I feel I have to remove your counters from my site, but I feel you have acted in bad faith. Placing pop-up ads on your customers sites without prior warning shows a total disregard for the trust your customers have placed in you. I realise you have to pay for the service which you offer to your customers at no charge, but doing something that will alienate many customers is not the way to go about it. By all means, but whatever advertising you like on your own site, but if you want to advertise on your customers' sites, you must ask their permission first.

If you come up with an advertising policy that I find acceptable, and introduce a clear policy of informing your customers of policy changes, I will consider reinstating your counters on my site. For the moment, however, I have no choice but to stop using your service.

Thank you for an excellent service over the last few years, and I'm sorry that it has to end this way.

Kind regards,

Me

Comments

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Aren't hit counters a bit 1990 anyway? You've got access to logs, surely? And you can write something simple to count hits and log referrals and stuff with php if not...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

The one I was using was a pretty discrete little bar code icon down the bottom, but it gave a lot of very useful information. For example, it could tell what search terms people typed into Google and what screen size people were browsing at. If you know that nobody is using 800x600 any more, it can be quite useful when doing a redesign.

Yes I have web logs, and my Webhost gives me a monthly report based on them, but it's effort to get informatoin out of them. And you can't get screen resolution without JavaScript.

I already have my own PHP counters, and I'll probably beef them up a bit to capture some extra information.

At the end of the day, I don't mind losing the counters much. They were useful but by no means irreplacable. But I'm annoyed that they'd make such a significant change without giving fair warning.

[spodlife]

Indeed, all you need to do is copy their javascript code (or the web tracking javascript of any of the web counters because they all do the same thing) and log the results yourself.

[jamesb.livejournal.com]

yes, it ws commented on Trufen that Octocon had a pop up, today
j

[jacobsmills.livejournal.com]

It's the fact that they are stealth counters that is so annoying. They are only popping up on a 1 in 5 (or so) basis.