cambaby

I have been trying these two counters on my site and now once a ay a dating site pops up and I have no other -embedded code- from any other company on my page. Im not sure which company is doing this but its fucking dirty shit. Anyone have experience with this?

infecto

Bump and I can certify that someone is popping it.

cambaby

Just a warning after some debugging it looks like Masterstats.com is popping up DATING SPONSORS on thier counters. Heads up.

darnit

Can anyone confirm this or show examples? Also what country are you in?

Also it could be that you may have spyware and that company is targeting one of the counters with their ads. Are you sure your system is clean?

infecto

Nothing to do with country since it pops for US ips. And its not spyware, because I saw it on both of my machines and cambaby saw it as well. Its also on another site that runs masterstats. What they are doing is storing a cookie and it seems like it only loads one popup a day or on some extended time period like that. What a bunch of sneaky fucks. Especially for having the banner say no pop-ups.

Wolfy

does nobody remember the sextracker scandals?!!!!

They are not fucking worth it.

darnit

Thats a shame because I like their service.... I have never seen it however on any site that I run.... strange.

infecto

This is just a random site that runs the tracker. Clear all your cookies/cache and load it up.

http://babes.coolios.net/

darnit

You are correct.... fuck that SUUUUUCKKKKSSS

darnit

So basically all my surfers who hit my sites without getting the cookie first are getting huge FPA's popping all over the sites....?

EDIT for the record I cant replicate it on any of my domains..... more digging needed.

infecto

I don't know how often etc they are doing it but they are doing it, seems pretty sneaky too.

jayme_

it only happens when you first visit the sites,

darnit clear your cookies and load up your sites (make sure popups are being allowed from your browser)

infecto

It can't be when you first visit the sites. I got it two days in a row and didn't clear cookies in between.

jayme_

it only happens to me after I clear my cookies.

infecto

Agreed but I think it timestamps it so only will pop every so often. This way they can put out alot of pops but not enough that surfers might complain or notice.


Then lets say the loaded a cookie for when you view the stats you don't get the pop that way owners never see it.

darnit

I did that and cant replicate it at all. I also got an email reply from them just now stating that they dont engage in this behavior. Apparently they are going to post in this thread soon to clear it up. I am giving them the benifit of the doubt for now as I just cant seem to replicate it on any of my sites.

I guess we will just need to wait and see what they say.

infecto

I recant my statement amazingly its webstats4u. I never even thought twice about them because they had been rock solid for a number of years under another name that isn't coming to me atm. My apologies to masterstats.

Delete the webstats4u cookie and it will pop every time.

darnit

Thats good to know (well not for those using that counter). Masterstats has been a damm solid counter and they send good traffic as well.

MASTERSTATS =

infecto

Yeah no shit. My bad on getting a ruckus going though I just thought for sure it was them.

Ace_luffy

that's not good

__________________

darnit

ya maybe make a new thread clearing their name

infecto

Hey I didn't make the orginal. =)

darnit

LOL just noticed that DOH! - oh well last post, hopefully it will just fall off the page.

MikeB_

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

MikeB_

darnit, thanks for notifying me

Mike Blazer
Programmer at Masterstats.com

cambaby

Mike thanks for clearing that up it does look like it may be WEBSTATS4U - formally known as Nedstat