June 9, 2009

• Internet Safety and You

  The ability to see all traffic that is coming to and from my blog is one of my favorite features of Xanga.  It’s the very first thing I check everytime I log on.  I read that John (CEO of Xanga) was worried that Footprints may have impeded some traffic on Xanga, and I’ve seen a petition where people want Footprints to be removed completely, but the Xanga Team absolutely MUST KEEP THIS FEATURE because everyone should have at LEAST some sort of idea of who’s looking at what on their website.  Just think, if you were able to see that someone was stalking your website, wouldnt you want to know so that you could prevent anything bad from happening before it does? 

  This simple convenience of privacy is something that Facebook gets an F- in, you have some flexibility for privacy but you cant actually see who’s been viewing your profile, when, and how often.  Livejournal fares no better, I can easily view someone’s private entries no-sweat.  Not so with Xanga, this is such a robust website with plenty of tools to monitor your blog’s traffic, it’s fantastic.  Xanga is THE place to be if you’re going to blog because of your ability to monitor traffic.  Footprints is a great feature, if you’ve ever used that, but to be on the safe side what I personally use and recommend for everyone out there is to also install the Suhock Anti-Stalker module  http://suhock.net/xanga/logs/index.php  It works best with the old private homepage though, it lists all of your most recent viewers and is incredibly convenient.  Then it’s just one click away from an even more detailed view, where you can see who’ve visited your blog, which outside link they used (such as if they found you through Google, or a message board where you posted a link, or Facebook where you put your blog in your profile which is kind of a dumb idea and I especially dont recommend ANYONE do). 

  It also shows the IP Address of the visitor, which for those of you who arent aware, every internet connection has one of these so when you’re surfing the internet other websites see that you’re surfing the site from that IP Address.  It’s like a thumbprint, they’re all unique.  I’m not 100% on whether that’s technically correct, so dont quote me, the point was to give you an idea.  So what you can do is copy that IP address and take it to http://www.ip-adress.com/ip_tracer/ and plug that number in and if someone visited your website and they werent logged into Xanga you could still get an idea of where they are located so you’ll know if it’s a local person or just another random scammer in Nigeria. 

  I use both the Suhock anti-stalker module and Xanga’s Footprints because often I find that one picks up something that the other one doesnt, or sometimes Suhock will fail for short periods of time.  I recently had an email exchange with a woman on Craigslist, she lives one town away and is a few years older than me, we never actually met or did anything more than just emailing, but with my email address she was able to find my current Xanga, as well as my previous Xanga, and she stayed up late every night that week reading through all 4 years worth of my blog content.  I know this because these two IP-tracing tools kept track of every hour and minute of her activity on my blog.  Needless to say, I wont be talking to her again.

  I urge anyone reading this, male or female, to buy themselves some sort of protection and keep it on them at all times.
  A GUN.
  You CANT AFFORD NOT TO HAVE IT.  You CAN’T ALWAYS TELL who’s messed up in the head.  And be EXTRA CAREFUL about people who you meet online.  It’s not like “To Catch a Predator” where everyone who they show on TV is a memorable creepy character that you would spot on the street and be able to say “wow, I can tell that guy’s a pedophile”, there’s plenty of normal guys that they chose not to air on that show simply because it wouldnt attract as many ratings as the wierd-o’s. 

  I’m not saying that meeting people on Xanga is a no-no, not at all.  If you’ve been talking with someone for a while, and you both feel comfortable, go ahead and go through with it!  There’s a ton of great people on this site, I’ve met plenty of folks through here and it was always chill.  But don’t just go charging into Craigslist, posting personal ads and responding to all of them without a second thought.  Not smart.  Trust me, it’s just better to go out in real life and meet people who you know already get some sun and fresh air and hang out with other real-life friends who do the same thing and spend their time doing normal activities.  I hear about other peoples’ creepy Craigslist encounters all of the time, and I worry about what could have happened had they not been prepared to handle the situation.
  
  Be safe everyone.

  • 3:29 am
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