title: rails: what is the best way to track unique clicks?
body: <p>I'm currently developing an affiliate tool with rails which is generating some unique affiliate links. I used to create those links via bitly and simply fetched the link-clicks through the bitly API. Awesome but if you delete your cookies, boom - click again and it counts again. So kind of useless.
  I tried to familiarize with the google analytics api to count unique clicks but believe this is just overhead. Storing the IP address is also not the way I like to work.</p>
  
  <p>Now I'm thinking to keep it simple and store the user's mac address in a database table when he clicks a link. The "stat model" is related to the link model and so I would find out which link was clicked by which mac address. If mac address exists already in the table for the link, don't count it.</p>
  
  <p>Is this a proper way to solve my problem?
  I read several articles where also mac addresses can be faked so I fear this can be hijaked in some way.
  If you have any awesome ways to work with unique link tracking in rails, I would be curious to work with them.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for any help and tips.</p>