Stalkerbook?
By Freedom News Service, The Shelby Star, N.C.
May 19–I know you’re watching me.
The thing is, you don’t know that I know. Yet. You don’t know
that I can see you scoping me out every day and that I know you’re watching my friends, too. Granted, it’s not like you’re driving by my house, but clicking on my MySpace.com profile on a daily basis might qualify as a little stalkerish.
How do I know this?
I installed a profile tracker on my page and while it operates on coding that’s beyond my technological knowledge, it lets me know who clicks on my profile, when, how they got to my page and even what pictures get viewed. I have no idea how reliable it is, but it’s one of dozens of so-called trackers circulating on the Net. Other social networking sites like Friendster.com and Facebook.com offer similar features, as do dating Web sites like Match.com.
“It’s a new trend we’re seeing a lot more of online now and that plays into the voyeuristic desires in all of us,” said Julie Albright, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California who studies Internet relationships. “Only now, it’s a two-way street. We can now look back at the person looking at us.”
Cyber experts and Internet users say it diminishes the level of anonymity users have come to rely on while surfing the Net.
“There’s an assumption that everyone can move under the cloak of anonymity on the Internet,” said Albright. “People who post personal information about themselves on sites like Friendster and MySpace generally have the feeling that only their friends see it and then there are the viewers who automatically assume no one knows they’re looking.”
The truth is, once you post intimate details of your life on the Web, they’re accessible to the public. Some employers cruise social networking sites for candidates and in some cases even fire employees over content deemed inappropriate.
Though profile trackers have reportedly been around for a few years, MySpace does not offer such features. So, savvy Web techs figured out coding to enable the tracking. Often, MySpace catches on and disables most of the codes out there so that they only work temporarily.
Some people have installed profile-tracker blockers so that they could continue “stalking” without being detected.
Other say they’ve cut down on clicking people’s profiles for fear of being labeled a stalker.
Not just Myspace
Facebook caused an uproar among its nearly 10 million members last year when it offered extra features called the News-Feed and Mini-Feed that recorded and showed every move the users made, down to the minute.
Facebook was dubbed “Stalkerbook” and hundreds of thousands of angry members said the new features were too invasive. Days later, Facebook officials added new layers of privacy and allowed users to opt out of News-Feed.
In 2005, Friendster — considered the older and less-hip version of MySpace — began allowing users to see who viewed their profiles but also included an off switch to disable the option. Dating sites like Match.com and Yahoo Personals also offer such features.
When is it stalking?
When does innocent browsing reach stalker status?
“In those situations, it all depends on what people do with that kind of information,” said Albright, who’s also a licensed family and marriage therapist. “A jilted ex can be inflamed by seeing that their former significant other has happily moved on, and it can lead to confrontations.”
Others say it’s “creepy” when someone who’s not a friend clicks on your page daily. Patrick Antoine, 25, of Fountain Valley, Calif., said he thinks women are more likely to install trackers on their profiles.
“I think girls are more interested in finding out who checks them out even though they’ll say, ‘Ooh, why is so-and-so looking at me?’” he said.
What I discovered was that the people I had thought would click on me really didn’t. And don’t think I didn’t have a minipanic attack wondering whether all my ex-boyfriends and their exes knew that my eyes eagerly drank up the details of their lives.
As for those who did click on me regularly — like the old friend I dropped years ago, husbands of friends and one suitor I’m not interested in, well, that was probably some uncomfortable information I didn’t need to know.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Shelby Star, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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