How sites like compete or alexa or quantcast acquire our data ?

Can we get together a list for same?

[Future]

1. They buy this data from ISPs (for sure)
2. Some malware embedding into end-user PC (for this they should be running a wide network of sites)

Anything else we can do to avoid them gathering our data ? We tested one of the sites among them (for paid service) and were astonished to find how they acquired this data.. !

Via further indepth research, we only traced out a few IP Ranges from a specific country using this keyword count (a sign of relief)

but... this is yet another web business or SEM ?

[edited by: Future at 8:49 pm (utc) on April 24, 2009]

[Rosalind]

2. Some malware embedding into end-user PC (for this they should be running a wide network of sites)

Do you mean the toolbars? They could be described as spyware, but it's usually opt-in.

I believe quantcast have a tracking tag that you can put on your websites in order to send data back to them.

[Future]

I believe quantcast have a tracking tag that you can put on your websites in order to send data back to them.

One of our medical website (very less competition) has no code embedded from any sites/providers/search-engines, neither do our article writers (including a few professional doctors).

Question being... how this sites get this data ?
Isnt this a privacy theft.. on finding indepth information, I can attain to one conclusion they should be buying this data from ISPs..

or maybe some another business unknown to people from search engines ?
Confused and need to fix this problem..

[agent99]

If you have a blog that's hosted by Typepad, they have code that's surrepticiously hidden in the footer of your blog. I tripped over this fact many months ago as I was making some changes to my blog and looked at the code. As someone who has consistently refused to provide any stats for competitive reasons, I was really angry. As far as I was concerned, Typepad was violating my privacy in releasing information that I consider to be proprietary. Perhaps if they were a free service, I would have overlooked it, but I was paying Typepad, and they should NOT have been releasing that information without first telling me they were doing it, and without asking my permission. In any case, I moved my blog shortly after finding out that they were sharing my information without my authorization. Now that I'm self hosted, I don't have the problem anymore. It would be interesting however, to hear what the legal community thinks of such practices.

Moral: If you are hosted by Typepad and don't want your stats out there, you should complain to them about violating your privacy. I think it's pretty crappy that they don't tell you that they're doing it, and do it without getting your permission. And if you are hosted by other third party sites, make sure you check to see if they've quietly planted code that shares your information without your knowledge. And if it bothers you, complain, or move your site elsewhere.