Statistics and trust... what do they have to do with each other? Well a while back my previously-innocuous stats package suddenly Did Evil to my page. An unnoticed change in the terms of service had paved the way for pop-up, pop-under, pop in-between, in fact think of any advert that has pissed you off - they were all on their way.

So I spent a couple of hours removing Nedstats from every page I had (there were a lot).

Since then, this blog has been unmonitored and my others (hosted on my own server) were being tracked by the hosting setup's Webalizer install. Which was fine until my hosting company deleted about a year's worth of data, with no warning. Hey, they're cheap; you get what you pay for.

Which brings me to Google Analytics. I actually signed up to get into Measuremap; but no account was forthcoming. A few days later the reason became clear: Google had acquired Measuremap and hired Jeff Veen (not a bad package, really :)).

So where does trust come in? Well, at Web Essentials 2005 Jeff talked about - amongst other things - "joining the culture of generosity" and building trust with your users. I scribbled down - amongst other things :) - "check out Measuremap".

I basically don't trust anyone. Well, that's not true. It just takes a fucking long time to earn my trust, a lesson not learned the hard way but certainly not the easy way either. After the Nedstats incident I am certainly wary of any internet company offering free stuff.

I am placing enough trust in Google Analytics to install its code into this blog's template. I'm basically doing this based on my trust in Jeff Veen not to be evil :)

So anyway, if you get any odd cookies or weirdness; let me know. I don't really expect trouble but I'll be watching out for it nonetheless.

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