I use a free counter, and it's helped inform me whether or not my site gets visited at all. I used to think I was doing all this for nothing. Now I get weekly reports. The last one said over 500 people visited my site. That makes it feel worthwhile to me. To my knowledge, counter.com doesn't engage in spying on your computer. I think it's easy to get paranoid when other sites, hosts, etc. engage in "shady practices." People start jumping whenever a cookie comes up. According to Curious Labs, Poser doesn't really connect over the Internet. Poser checks to see if you have other copies of Poser running on your network, using the same serial number. Because of that little fluke, your firewall can think Poser is "phoning home." That also means my wife's computer needs to be on even when she's out of town. If her computer isn't running, I can't use Poser, PhotoShop and Ulead PhotoImpact. That's pretty weird to me.