Recently I visited my own literature blog soul log I was completely shocked when a popup came up, advertising a get-rich-quick website, featuring a very fat person marveling at how he made $14,596 at home using Google, complete with a stupid narration and photographs of fake checks.

soul log does not employ any sort of advertising. I experimented with Google Adsense as well as networks like Entrecard but they never really worked out. I have several widgets on the page, notably a page view tracker (for public view), a private Google Analytics tracker, and a Maps Among Us visitor map.

I examined the source code but there was nothing interesting. Then I decided to inspect the page, and, tada, I found two scripts in the header, added using document.write() or some other devious method.

One of the scripts was a copy-tracking script, and the other… a advertising injection script. I had added neither, so I began to turn off and on different widgets on the sidebar, and what was the result?

Maps Among Us.

I always thought it a good company so I disabled all other scripts and sure enough, it was MAU. I fired off an email to their team but have received no reply.

What does this mean?

It’s sad how outsourcing can do this kind of thing to our sites. When we put your JavaScript script link on our websites, its because we trust the companies who have made these scripts, and it disturbs me how companies have decided to abuse this trust.

Admittedly, not all companies practice such behavior, but when one company does so it hurts the entire swarm. I ended up removing all script references on my page other than that of my own and Google Analytics.

Don’t abuse our trust. Because users, clients, customers— they are your source of power, revenue, and everything. Without us you are nothing. What would be smarter: maintaining a set of good customers or abusing their trust and injecting advertisements?

The truth is, if you can find no other source of revenue, then you should have thought out your business plan more thoroughly. Only a small number of companies (say, Twitter) without a very good source of monetization eventually work out.

Ending the story: solving the conflict.

After contacting the Maps Among Us staff, they alerted me that this was not something they had intended to happen; apparently some “partners” are given access to their user base. It’s wonderful to know that companies I don’t know can inject code onto my website.

In addition, they told me that the copy-tracking script was an intended feature: they were planning on rolling this out to all their widgets.

Now it’s wonderful that they provide copy-tracking… if they were a copy-tracking company, that is. Truth be honest, I can’t stand it when companies add “features” I’ve never wanted.

The official response from the team:

We are always looking to provide new and exciting stats and we feel that this will be one of them, once we get it fully launched on the stats pages. whos.amung.us is a suite of stats, using any of our widgets gathers all the stats, for instance putting our real time user counter widget or a map widget on your blog both collect the same set of stats – as you can see when you click on your map – there is more then just a map being displayed, historical data and a list of who’s on your site are also available.

When you do push this out, please give your users the ability to turn this off. In the meantime, the maps widget is staying in the inactive area.

Photograph Lara604.