…and I’m glad it did.
I found a totally blank screen when trying to view this blog 30 minutes ago, so I did CTRL-U in FireFox and straight away saw that the screen stopped being drawn when it reached the AddToAny section of the page. I disabled the plugin and my blog was back.
Then I did a little digging.
It turns out that in January 2012 AddToAny implemented tracking code into their plugin for marketing companies (media6degrees and Lockerz) and I didn’t know because they didn’t tell anyone.
Because my blog failed today (maybe the AddToAny tracking server went down), I did the research and I found out what was going on. AddToAny is now gone from all my blogs never to return.
How many blog owners are still using this, totally oblivious to the fact their visitors are being tracked by marketing companies? Well maybe a lot less after today if they spotted their blog dead and followed the same path I did.
Consider yourself warned.
-Frank Haywood
P.S. I have a feeling this may be illegal under EU law. Maybe someone who knows more about this than me can comment?
