Tracking devices

As I was adding some of the minimal HTML coding to this site, I wanted to include a counter, so that I have a sense if anyone besides me is looking at the blog (even though as of now there is not really any reason why anyone should, given that there's nothing here to see). In any case, it turns out you have the choice between two different counters: a simple counter that keeps track of the number of visitors and a more complex type, which tracks a whole host of information about visitors, including their IP addresses, how much time they spend on the site, which site they visited before this, the links they use, etc. The existence of this tracking technology is of course not an earth-shattering novelty, after all anyone who thinks twice knows they are being tracked online all the time, but something still surprised me. I didn't expect blogs to include these kinds of trackers. Not that I consider bloggers to be more ethically minded than all the commercial sites out there. But bloggers don't have the same business incentives to track potential customers. Or do they? What perhaps surprised me most was my own response to the availability of this kind of tracking option. For a moment, I seriously considered using one of these complex tracking devices on this site. Not for any malicious reason, just because I thought it would be fun to see who reads this blog. Luckily, I caught myself again quickly and decided to use the simple counter instead, which does not track any information about visitors (at least not that I know!) But there I went, seduced by this surveillance and tracking technology, which I despise, if only for a brief moment.