Generation of hit counts on web pages

Hi everyone!

I’m having trouble with solving an issue regarding hit counts a server registered. I apologize in advance if this is posted in the wrong thread/forum but I’m completely new to the topic and need every help I can get. The situation is the following: I had an account on a server (not my own server) and downloaded little above 2,000 files (images) that were allocated on different pages within the same domain on that server (a gallery, so to speak). After I was done with that, I got the message that those downloads generated over 17,000 hit counts and was asked if I used any kind of download plugin or script.
Since I didn’t use any kind of plugin, add-on or script for that purpose, I now have trouble understanding where those 17,000 hit counts come from. So my guess is that maybe it has something to do with my add-ons.
I’m using Firefox with add-ons like Wappalyzer, Firebug and also a download-plugin, DownThemAll. However, I did not use it during those downloads. So my question would be if somebody knows if there’s any known issue with those add-ons, e.g. they generate server requests without being used actively or something similar. For example, I’m not sure if DownThemAll generates server requests for every single element on the accessed web page beforehand to have the links ready in case you open the add-on and want to download them. Does anybody know more about this? Or maybe someone has another idea what could cause such an enormous amount of hit counts, even though I didn’t use any script or plugin?
I’d appreciate any help or advice, thanks in advance. If further questions occur about my issue, I will gladly answer them.

Best regards

I’m not quite sure which area of the forum would be best for this topic.

The first thing I would suggest is that you access the logs, if possible, and look at the information they provide.

Logs include information such as the IP that generated the request and if that request was completed.

If the IP that it shows is yours (there are plenty of website that can tell you which is your public IP address, if you don’t know it, just Google it) then it is obvious that one or more of your plugins is creating that fake count.

If that’s the case, do some tests…

You can also test it in your own web server, if you have one installed in your computer.

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I like the web server on my own system idea. If I run one (e.g. Xampp with an Apache server) and install AWStats, too, then put some html scripts on that server and access them with and without add-ons, would that already do the trick? Or am I missing a component?

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the logs from the original server I had an account on, so the web server on my own system is actually my only shot.

Thanks for the answer so far, molona!

You don’t need to install any statistics to know this. Simply look at the logs. You can use a spreadsheet like Excel to analyse the data. That’s how I do it.

But yep, you got the idea.

It might be worth changing your FTP password and running anti-virus and anti-malware/spyware scans on any computers that you use, just incase there is anything running that shouldn’t be

Yeah, I realized that I don’t even need a statistic tool when I ran my first test. But AWStats provides an overview for the server accesses, hits, pages and so on in html format, so it comes in handy. Until now it all looks normal, with and without the add-ons. But so far I only tested with the Xampp pages itself. I’ll try it with other html scripts and different add-on combinations. Maybe I’ll find something.

Regarding the FTP password: there’s actually no password solely for FTP involved. As soon as I suscribe, I pay and get an email with my system-generated username and password, which I have to use in order to access the server. Once logged in, I don’t need an extra FTP password for downloading and such. Or did you mean something else, SpacePhoenix?

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