A month ago, Jason Calacanis went on a rant about why everyone should boycott comScore . He felt they were using sketchy tactics to bully people into their pay-to-play model for measuring web analytics. He also noted that their free competitors like Quantcast, Google, and Compete would soon eat their lunch. Both Quantcast and Google (Analytics) offer direct counting of pageviews (but even these methods can be abused ). But you may wonder how exactly Compete gets its numbers? It appears, that some sketchy tactics are (or at least were) employed, as well. We were recently pointed to this post from last month by Ben Edelman, a Harvard privacy advocate. In it, he details the data the Upromise toolbar collects and sends out. This toolbar is used by college students looking for savings on various items across the web, and can be quite useful. But until a few weeks ago, it appears they were also sending web browsing (and more personal) data to Compete without anyone's knowledge. Writes Edelman: