Does GE affect web page counters?

[psodeika]

I received a note from my system admin indicating I had an abnormally high web usage in December. The web page counter scored more than 52,000 web pages viewed. I can't account for some 3000 pages viewed per each day I was on the computer. I did have heavy GE usage though. Do the files used by GE register as web pages or is there something else going on? Spybot? Any one have an idea?

[shrinkingman]

I would strongly recommend you check for spyware and similar threats. Adaware and SpySweeper are both pretty good and there are free versions of both, and I would suggest you get both. If I'm checking for viruses and spyware I try every program I can, they can all find different stuff so don't rely on just one.

[Stadsman]

Maybe one of your overlays is stored on your web page... Each time the overlay is loaded into GE, it may be counted as a web view. Otherwise it may indeed be a problem with malware.

[psodeika]

I did find only one instance of malware on my pc and cleaned it. I am curious if there are any IT experts out there who can comment on any performance or security/firewall issues that google earth might cause.

For example, are all of the images stored on the net and linked to from my pc or are they downloaded to my hard drive? Will extensive use of GE load my hard drive with images or are they stored remotely? I'd be interested to learn how this works. Is there a forum that discusses this?

[McLamb]

Google Earth is no security risk at all, everythings done from your computer to the Google servers and no personal information is ever sent, except for your address when your looking at your house which I'm sure is safe.

GE downloads the images to your computer, these are temporarly saved in a cache file and these are overwritten as you view new spots. You can change its size in options from 16-2000MB.

About your web usage, GE can use a good chunk of bandwidth. Is the counter you are talking about on a server hosted on your computer or a remote server you have or a company server on your network? The system administrator may just be throwing out 50,000 as this is the equivilent of that many webpages. You could probably tell him you've been doing research with GE and see if he wants you to stop or not.