For about a week now I’ve been using a new statcounter called “Sitemeter” and liked it because it pounds out a lot of really good information with no limitations.  Today people started to contact me regarding Javascript errors they were encountering and I asked for help regarding timing when the problem began.

As it turned out (because they alerted me) I noted a very tiny message in the bottom of my browser in the past hour – ”Waiting for….SPECIFICCLICK.NET” and because my own connection to my site was slow and I had checked usng PC Pitstop and found that exactly the reverse was true everywhere else I went rabbit hunting. 

Here’s what I found…

In the interests of safeguarding visitors Sitemeter has been removed from this website and I note an immediate “speedup” here as soon as the code was gone.

I apologize for any inconvenience to vistors and will state that if you hit any website using the service you may have a problem and should scan your computer for spyware.  My only excuse is that I didn’t know what they were doing and somebody should come up with a patch that immediately halts a computer if it encounters the code I was using.

It goes without saying — this situation has really “pissed me off”.

Therefore this entry.

Please note my site “stats” are still available here although somewhat encumbered because I’m using the freeware version.  I’m working on that and really happy now that I didn’t delete the code. 

Let’s hope I don’t screw up again (and I’m having “rabbit stew” tomorrow).

Update:  HUGE difference here.  I just downloaded my site to my computer and the speed has increased exponentially. 

Advice — if you are using this “stat tracker” TRASH IT.  All your visitors will appreciate the speedup in their loadtime and less spyware as netspeed increases.  To be brief — I suspect now that Sitemeter was even downloading my backup.  

“How screwed up is that?”  

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