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If you don’t have your own Web site, (or quite possibly even if you do), you probably don’t know that most of them have invisible statistical counters programmed into the code. In a nutshell, this means that every time you visit a page on the Web, someone knows it. What follows is a list of just some of the data these counters record:
1. The name of your server or Internet provider:
This is potentially damning, depending on the size of the server and the way the company is listed online. For example, my personal Web site’s stat counter can show me when someone from the company I work for is poking around my site. My company, which I’ll call The Charity Group (for these purposes), has its own server, which is clearly labeled “The Charity Group” online. So when someone working for The Charity Group hits my site, it registers as The Charity Group. Now, there are over 200 people working for The Charity Group, so I don’t know exactly WHO is looking, because they’re all lumped together.
But it has happened that someone working in a small office of, say, two or three people, (a company with its own server) has hit my site, someone I know, and in that case, it’s pretty easy to determine who’s on there. So if that’s your situation, be careful what sites you hit.
Here’s an example of someone who hit my site, who works for The Elizabeth Board of Education in Elizabeth, NJ. I don’t know anyone who works there, but if I did…
Those of you browsing through AOL or Comcast or Verizon, etc., are pretty safe. Here’s the kind of info I’m getting on you:
Basically just the city and state you’re in… nothing really incriminating there.
2. How you arrive at a site:
The stat counters show what site or referrer you came from. For instance, if The Los Angeles Times links from one of my pieces on their site to my Web site, and you click through, my stat counter points that out. It also shows me who is coming in through Google searches AND–this is the fun part–what you’re searching when you land on my site. Usually, it’s my name, but every day there are some whacky searchers looking for the most unusual things. I used to have a photo on my site of the giant breast in Woody Allen’s film Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but had to remove it because I was being bombarded by people looking for “breasts” and “boobs.”
In this screen grab, you can see how this person came to my site through Google by searching the title of my novel.
3. The exact date and amount of time you spend on a site
Stat counters clock the amount of time you spend on each page of a Web site. By simple subtraction, one can, for instance, determine how long you spend reading different pages of a site. In this screen grab, you can see someone who found me by searching my name on Google, and you can see them clicking around through various pages on my site, and the date/time of each click.
4. Your browser:
Though there are other things the stat counters track, I’ll end here with a fun one:
Stat counters are able to see what browser you’re using to access a site. By far, the most popular, of course, is Internet Explorer. But it’s interesting to see more and more Mac Safari users (as seen in this screen grab), especially in Europe. (BTW: anyone know what Auna is?)
While much of the info is meaningless, I once had an Internet stalker and the stat counter really came in handy in determining who the person was. I now open the comments for those who want to explain other bits of useful info stat counters capture.
I was lead to believe that all MSNTV (Webtv) users were lumped together so all you see is that it is a webtv user viewing the site.
This thing has a tendency to shut off for various phantom reasons so you might notice that in a rather short period of time a webtv user comes, leaves, comes right back, leaves again, comes back again. Sometimes to get the thing to move on, I have to go backwards first. Basically, if you’re looking at a log of my hits it probably looks goofy, so don’t try to figure out what the heck is going on.(haha) It’s not me, it’s webtv.
posted by Tdave on 1-14-2008 at 5:12 am
Interesting post David. I am sure there are a lot of folks totally unaware of that. Of course there are millions of websites out there using Google Analytics (as well as other tools) which provide much more information about visitors. Your comments do not allow links so I’ll put up the one I want to show you (on GA’s help) using the suggest topic/link one
posted by giL on 1-14-2008 at 5:21 am
Auna is a fairly popular internet provider here in Spain…
posted by Mar on 1-14-2008 at 6:57 am
When someone comments on my blog, I get it emailed to me from TypePad. The comment includes the person’s IP address, so I can then go to my stats page and match up the IP visit with that person’s name! So now I know all the stats on lots of specific people. Fun. Oh, also, you don’t get to see who visits your blog if they read it on an RSS feed reader like Bloglines or Google Reader.
posted by Karen on 1-14-2008 at 8:09 am
I was wondering about the feed readers. If all or most of a post is displayed in Google Reader, I don’t click thru, unless I want to comment, and I seldom do. I sometimes feel a little guilty that it won’t show up in the stats. On the other hand, those sites that don’t show more than a tease in the reader annoy me, and I seldom go to the site unless it really interests me. Suffice to say I really enjoy Mental Floss, I read all posts, sorry I don’t show up in the stats more often. rb
posted by arby on 1-14-2008 at 9:56 am
Not to make anyone too paranoid, but with just a tiny bit of code on your webserver you can tell a whole lot more than that, including performing port scans, etc. A good site to see what you’re sharing with the world (knowingly or not), is Gibson Research Corporation (grc.com). There are also software anonymisers out there that mask your ip and ports, and will even help you shield some of the more telling information about yourself from all the bad guys on the web.
posted by Scott on 1-14-2008 at 4:23 pm
Basically a visit to a website can tell the host of that site three things; your IP address, what browser you’re using, and what site linked you there (and that’s only if you clicked a link on another site to get there.) From those three bits of inof, they can surmise several other things, like what city you’re in, what kind of computer you’re using, what kind of connection you’re using, maybe what drew you to that site, etc… Most sites will use that info in refining their strategies for drawing visitors and improving the experience at the site. Some will use cookie information so that your browser remembers things from your last visit, and so they can find out a little more about your habits.
All that said, very, very, very few will use the info they glean from your visit for nefarious purposes, so most all paranoia in this subject is misplaced.
posted by Dave on 1-14-2008 at 7:54 pm
Good information but whenever i want to surf the internet in privacy i go to the public library. Haha.
posted by J Probst on 1-15-2008 at 1:17 pm
Some blogs regularly feature “interesting” referring site stats from their visitors. Most of these involve bizarre, often hilarious, searches for porn on Google that inadvertantly lead the porn-seeker to the blog. Lately I’ve been reading through blogs kept by ER docs, nurses, and paramedics. These types of blogs get some really crazy referring-site stats. Apparently some Google users out there are really turned on by rectal thermometers . . . .
A true crime/victims’ rights blog called Lost in Lima Ohio would regularly feature referring-site stats that indicated visitors were looking for child pornography. I think the blogmaster would try to contact the ISP of these pervs or local law enforcement whenever this happened. I wonder how effective it would be if more bloggers kept track of referring site stats in order to detect pedophiles and if doing so would in any way help law enforcement officials catch these predators.
posted by just_say_no_to_lutefisk on 1-15-2008 at 3:37 pm
Auna is a Spanish telecommunications company offering telephone, cable and internet.
posted by Sue on 1-18-2008 at 12:57 pm
When it comes to the amount of time I spend on a site, or a page, a good deal of that is loading time. For example, it takes as much as four minutes for each page of Mental_floss to load on my Webtv, two minutes on a really fast day. It took me 18 minutes just to come to this page(track it down) and to make this comment. I hope to get a ‘real’ computer soon.
posted by Tdave on 1-19-2008 at 3:51 am
Auna is a spanish ISP
posted by David on 1-22-2008 at 3:15 am
This is why I use a free web proxy. No site can determine who I an are where I am coming from.
posted by Bill on 2-3-2008 at 5:33 pm