Sitemeter is a free/pay webstats service I used to supplement the very basic TypePad page count statistics. It shows visit/page view counts and generic info about visitors like OS, Browser, resolution which was useful to fine tune the site. You can see the sort of information they provided in my “Anniversary Posts”. However tonight Sitemeter is gone as I discovered some disturbing news about their service. Sadly it isn’t new as dates back to April, at least, but when I found Michaels post (linked below) it was the first time I’d heard about this.
Sitemeter were happy to put news of enhanced features on their blog, even admit to some technical problems but did not, to my knowledge, say a word about a change which places a SpecificClick tracking cookie on your machine or sharing tracking data with another partner. They have responded via comment on other blogs claiming that the cookie is not spyware and is from a trusted partner.
Even if that’s true it’s no longer relevant. Sitemeter know my email (I get a weekly email with summary stats) and I monitor their company blog feed but have not heard a peep from them about this change or their subsequent offer, again via other blogs, to opt out of the new “service”.
SpecificClick may be a trusted partner of Sitemeter, sadly Sitemeter is no longer a trusted partner of mine.
If you use Sitemeter; The Sitemeter code was removed from my blogs at 00:22:08 16–05–2007 (NZ Local) & their meter replaced by a link to this post 
and I’d recommend to anyone using their service to do the same.
To clean up your machine: The tracking cookie is from SpecificClick. You can read more about it here & will need to remove from your machine. I recommend deleting cookies via your browser and/or running spyware scanner and also blocking specificclick.net. Michael’s post has more detailed instructions if you need them.
Sorry for the hassle.
Things you should know before using Sitemeter « Michael Sync
It’s so sad for me to hear that SiteMeter, a well-known web stats providers, is pushing specificclick tracking and advertising cookies on to visitors of sites using their service.
