Update on Statcounter: No spyware

I use Statcounter to track visitors to my blog and have been happy with it so far. This email from Statcounter increased my confidence further. Thought you might want to read it:

A few months back, Statcounter was approached by an advertiser, offered lots of $$$, and asked to include a spyware cookie on all of our member sites…we refused on the spot.

You install Statcounter to track visitors to your site NOT to open yourself and your visitors up to being spied upon by phantom advertising corporations.

It appears, however, that other players in the world of webstats were happy to take up this offer…

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 light of this, Statcounter wants to assure you that we track your visitors for you, only you and not any one else.

Which provider would you prefer??

Update 6 May 2007: For Statcounter to work, they must put their OWN cookie into the computer so that they are able to distinguish between returning visitors and new visitors. This is not for spying purposes and is completely different from putting a third party spyware cookie.