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

[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.