If you want to know who is using your information, you should ask them. And to maximize your response, you should reward them for responding. All Web site measurement is based on log files. Every time a Web server delivers a file, its name, the address it was delivered to, the time, and other information is written into a file on the server. There are numerous public domain and commercial programs for analyzing Web site log files.
Some software goes one step further in analyzing log files.
There is no protection, for example, against spurious hits added to a log file. Registering Users One way to make usage information more accurate is through the use of registration. In a registration scheme, the user is given an ID and password that he must use every time he logs on to a site. There are a number of problems with registration schemes. There are so many sites on the Internet that if a user had to enter an ID and password for every one, it would be a serious burden on the user.