M
Miths
Guest
... I'm using internet explorer version 7 and google to browse the internet. And IE7 and Google also tracks IP adresses etc. to help IE7 and Google become better programs...
Anyone running a website can tell you that just about any visitor tracking software - AWStats, Webalizer (both typically provided by the web host and parsing server stats), Google Analytics, StatCounter (3rd party trackers requiring a few lines of code inserted on your pages) and many others - can tell damn near anything about their surfers' technical specifications (IP - and thus country, OS, screen resolution, browser name and version, Java/Flash availability, connection speed) and where they were coming from, which keywords they were searching for if coming from a search engine, where they are leaving to, the route they took through your site, how long they stayed on each page, if they've been there before and how many times, and so on and so forth.
It's just statistics, and while it can certainly be used for marketing purposes (and obviously should for any commercial site owner with a hint of business sense), it's probably rather doubtful that anyone will bother looking at your particular stats (which admittely isn't readily possible in all stats software either, though some does allow viewing data on an IP level). It's just numbers between thousands or hundreds of thousands others - it's the big picture that's interesting.
That said, EULAs like this one can of course be grounds for concern if it's used as a platform for inserting unwanted ads etc., but as long as they stay in the game (and shown under more or less appropriate circumstances) I personally don't have much of a problem with that.