Hey guys,
it's Mike Blazer, programmer of Masterstats.com. I can't tell you anything about Sextracker right away, but Masterstats has nothing to do with the popups.
I only wonder why nobody asked his/her webmaster/programmer or looked at the counter code himself. The counter code says clearly that we only send a counter *image* to your page, means <IMG> tag - no additional HTML code, no additional .js javascript files, no layers - just the image source. So, please correct me if I'm wrong, but we simply can't open a popup from your page using this counter code. You always need Javascript window.open() function to open a popup. You can see that we don't use it.
If you want to check it yourself:
1. go grab any telnet like program like Putty or SecureCRT in case you use Windoze. In case Linux just do
> telnet image.masterstats.com 80
2. copy the counter image location from your page. For example the counter icon at our
https://www.masterstats.com/counter/home page has this URL:
https://image.masterstats.com/cnt?id...08488768032718
in case there was no referrer (ex= parameter).
3. create a new connection with the Host: image.masterstats.com Port: 80 or 443 if your telnet program supports secure connections.
4. use this connection to connect to our host and paste the following lines
GET /cnt?id=51&ex=&pg=https%3A//www.masterstats.com/counter/home&r=0.4808488768032718 HTTP/1.1
Host: image.masterstats.com
[no line breaks in GET ... HTTP/1.1 line and double Enter after the second line]
You'll see 302 Found status which means redirection and the Set-Cookie header. There was a cookie related posting in this thread - we use exactly one short cookie to match visitors against the current month pool and give you the new/return visitors stats.
OK, back to telnet testing. If you did 1-4 steps you'll see something like:
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
...
Set-Cookie: SHOW_ID=OJOIUXJLSXOULUJVMLRKNVOWKULN; path=/; expires=Sat, 30-Sep-2006 03:23:59 GMT
Location:
http://image.masterstats.com/post-cn...9586.061806208
plus some other HTTP headers. You can see that image.masterstats.com assigns you a new cookie because you didn't have one. Now we want to go to that address in the "Location" header and see what's going next.
5. Open the same connection again and enter 3 lines:
GET /post-cnt?id=51&pd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.masterstats.com%2Fc ounter%2Fhome&j=1&r=899586.061806208 HTTP/1.1
Cookie: SHOW_ID=OJOIUXJLSXOULUJVMLRKNVOWKULN
Host: image.masterstats.com
[Note that I copied the address part from the previous response's Location header and I copied the cookie too - you should do the same. GET should start from the first cursor position, single blanks between GET and address and protocol name - should be exactly 3 lines + double Enter]
6. You'll see some headers and some binary garbage that is in fact GIF image (counter icon).
That's all that happens when your page executes Masterstats counter code.
End of the exercise
Well, the moral here is that HTTP is not a rocket science and we can always investigate what's going on there by ourselves.
OK, now - if you see a "Pop-up blocked" note you can always try to click or right-click on that note to see that popup and may be where it comes from or may be "Page Info" could tell you where it comes from etc.
Hope this too long note helps. Or some part of it
Please, feel free to mail me at admin-at-masterstats.com if you experienced some problems with Masterstats.
Mike Blazer
Programmer at Masterstats.com