SiteMeter-SpecificClick Cookie Discovery Prompts Cancellations and Cleanups

While creating another unrelated website, I considered if I wanted to use the SiteMeter service for tracking visits and visitor statistics. I had not considered the question for a long time, and so I Googled “sitemeter sucks”, a strategy I use to find criticism of a product or service.

Apparently SiteMeter is now serving third-party cookies to all visitors of websites where SiteMeter is used. The cookies are from a company called SpecificClick. The cookies are not necessarily spyware, but they do track visitors and behaviors, and most importantly nobody knows what they do with the collected information.

Most disappointing is that SiteMeter did not inform webmasters that they started doing this a few months ago. They have also refused to respond to numerous inquiries about the deal, causing many websites to stop using the SiteMeter service. There are grumblings about a class action lawsuit of webmasters against SiteMeter, but I doubt it will go that far.

I know many blogs used the service because it was free and user-friendly, but I strongly encourage them to stop. Free alternatives include Google Analytics (powerful but complicated) and StatCounter (what I’m using). I noticed the IdahoFallz.com website even seems to load faster after removing SiteMeter code.

I encourage visitors to inspect their cookies and delete all that contain the name SiteMeter, specificclick, or even the word ‘ad’. Look through all of your cookies, because they are organized alphabetically and I found some in places such as ‘about.specificclick’. Don’t know how to find or delete cookies? Firefox: Tools > Options > Privacy > Show Cookies. Select specific cookies and hit your ‘Delete’ button. Internet Explorer: Tools > Internet Options > General > Settings > View Files. IE does not organize these neatly like Firefox does, so it can be helpful to hit the ‘Type’ column heading in order to organize them better.

You can also block future SpecificClick cookies in Firefox via Tools > Options > Privacy > Exceptions, type the phrase specificclick.net and hitting ‘Block’, then typing the phrase adopt.specificclick.net and hitting ‘Block’, then ‘Close’ and ‘OK’.

Keep in mind that not all cookies are bad. IdahoFallz.com uses some cookies to provide a better experience for you, most notably for the ‘Read New Comments’ script. Deleting that cookie will cause all comments to appear new to you.

If you see websites displaying the SiteMeter graphic, encourage them via email or comments to switch to a new service.

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