Sitemeter Follies

Everyone seems to still be in the post-primary hangover / catch up on sleep stupor, so while no one's paying attention ... let's dish!

Over 90% of the time, when I take a look at my usage stats from sitemeter, I can't tell much of anything about who is using the blog. The record of each hit gives an approximate geographic location but these are notoriously wrong. In the 3 1/2 years I've been writing this blog sitemeter has never once pinpointed me in the right area. Plus, the partial IP and town shift every few months so it's an everchanging list of locales. Most hits come through as being from comcast, verizon, AOL, with no identifying information. Some corporate computers have the company name attached; some don't.

Once in a blue moon, though, a hit comes through with the veil dropped and, oh my!

In the interest of letting you know what kind of tracks you might leave, here are the top 3 sitemeter follies from the past year:

1) There is a computer server out there somewhere named HOUSE OF REPRESETATIVES. Yes, they are shouting their inability to spell. I have no idea which (if any) government office the server is attached to.

2) Most pr people who approach me do so in a very straightforward manner. One fellow did get caught being sneaky. He wrote from a gmail address suggesting my readers might be very interested in a particular event that would also be televised. As I usually do when contacted by people who don't state an affiliation I tried to look into him but the name was too common to find any reliable information. It did look like an interesting event so I wrote about it and let him know. One of the first hits directly on that post was one of those very very rare IP's that has an actual name attached. In that case the name was unusual enough to find. And it happened to be someone who worked at a local pr firm that happened to be representing one of the event sponsors and that happened to also employ someone with the same name as the person who first approached me (client and staff list on their website). Coincidence? I think not. Honestly, I still would have written about the event if he had said he worked at the firm. It is one that has a good reputation, as did the event sponsor. But now I tend to view the whole outfit with a jaundiced eye.

3) If any of you save links on your hard drive and use them to revisit websites, be aware that you may be leaving some very specific tracks; the file name shows up as the entry and exit points. If you access the links from home and have the links on your C drive you are probably still anonymous. However, people who use file folders or filing systems and work from business computers may be telling more than they know. I learned that someone at a local university is using some of my blog posts as research for a doctoral dissertation, with enough info to find out their name and dissertation topic. They saved links in a file that included the word dissertation and their first initial and last name.

3a) The winner of this year's sitemeter follies, though, goes to a firm that specializes in integrity and background searches. Their IP address lists the company's name. Someone there is visiting and revisiting some of my blog posts on a particular politician using a file saved on their computer drive, with a filename that includes the name of the politician. So basically the firm is shouting from the mountaintop, to anyone who will listen, who they are researching. If I were paying these folks for a confidential search I'd be ticked enough to ask for a refund.

Really and truly all this is TMI. I'd rather not know. So in the interest of helping you pull up your socks and not let it all hang out, here are some tips on keeping your digital bra straps under your blouse:

* When following a link in an email or on a saved list of links, put the cursor on the link, right click on the mouse, copy the link location, and paste it into a new tab or window. It's a little cumbersome but it leaves no referral footprints.

* Use bloglines or a similar feed service. The feed stat service I use doesn't provide me with any identifiable data on who is accessing the RSS feed. While I enjoy seeing those house.gov hits on my sitemeter stats, and have no idea which office they are attached to, the House offices may prefer to be less obvious.

* Whether it is actually true or not assume that everything you do from a work computer will leave a footprint with your company's name on it.

* Make sure your IT people can spell.

Let me repeat, I know absolutely nothing about 90% of the people who come directly to the blog and 100% of those who read it on a feed. However, about 10% of those who visit the blog leave tracks; sometimes very entertaining ones.

More sophisticated tracking systems can probably tell a lot more about a lot more visitors. Larger websites and blogs, with greater traffic, probably can't spare the time it takes to go through their individual hits. But it's a tough world out there, take care of your self. And pull up your socks.