There are sites that allow Twitter users to track those who follow and unfollow you. This is one such site:
Welcome to fllwrs, the Twitter follower tracker.
Would you like to see a record of who follows and unfollows you every day?
Would you like to get notified when someone unfollows you?
Use fllwrs to monitor changes in your Twitter followers over time and keep a history of followers that have been lost or added.
I do not subscribe to these tracking apps on Twitter. The government is doing enough to track our every move, thank you very much.
Anyway, the fllwrs tracking app reminded me of a situation many years ago on a site called Multiply. At the time, someone who did not like me embedded a tracking device on my account and the account of someone with whom I was about to have a seven year relationship.
That’s another story, but here is the post.
Is This Cyber Stalking?
Anyone who secretly embeds an invisible tracking counter on another person’s blog is doing so to track that person and anyone else who visits said blog.
Embedded codes, created by others, can be placed anywhere: in a comment on a blog or a note or a video or a photo … even the guestbook.
It is quite common for individuals and businesses to install stat counters on their own blogs or websites, for a variety of reasons, and it is perfectly legal to do so.
Where I would have to question the legality of a stat counter is if someone secretly posted such counter on my site in an attempt to monitor the activity taking place on my blog.
Is it legal to secretly track the activities of other people who are totally unaware that such a counter has been embedded on their personal blog? I don’t know.
However, in my humble opinion, this is a form of stalking. It is a terrible invasion of privacy. It is abusive. It could be illegal.
That’s it. That’s the post. The way I felt back then is pretty much the way I feel today.
© Catherine Evermore. All rights reserved.