| LJ Toys |
[Aug. 14th, 2008|09:57 pm] |
I was chatting about this yesterday [or the day before, I can't remember] and I'm surprised it's not more well known. There was some discussion of it a few years ago, maybe on metafandom or something, which was how I found out about it. Anyway, it's a way to tell who visits your LJ by capturing IP addresses.
I was going to do a tutorial, but I went to the website to review setting up an account, and it really is very simple.
http://ljtoys.org.uk/signup.php
What happens is you get a username and password, and it will generate a bot for you. You can use it through icons if you want, but the simpler way is to just grab the bot addy, like this:
[img src="http://lalala.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif" alt="" border=0] (using carats instead of brackets)
Paste it into your user info, or an entry, and you can see who's visiting. Pretty easy.
Through discussion, I realize that some people are very uncomfortable about having people able to see your visits. While I grok that, it's not a new concept at all. Websites have been grabbing IP addresses for years and years. My old Sublevels website had a tracking counter, and I could see the IP addresses of the people visiting. There are other sites that will tell you what country, state, and city the person's visiting from, also. This one uses LJ names, which I understand feels a bit more personal, even though IP addresses aren't privileged information. Whether they fall under that heading in the future remains to be seen, but at the moment, they're very much public.
NB: I should note that LJ Toys is not always completely accurate, but I think about 90% of the time, it's right on the money. Also, it gets really, really busy, and if you don't have a paid account, you can't always see the stats. FYI.
Now, if the idea makes you extremely nervous and you don't want people to see you visiting a particular place, there's a way or two to get around that:
- there are circumventor sites like http://www.stupidcensorship.com that will let you navigate through their proxy server. I used this at my last job, not to dodge being seen, but because they had blocked LJ and I was getting withdrawal shakes. Sneaky and effective. Saved my sanity.
- there are also software packages that you can buy that will scramble your IP address. I've never looked into these because I'm both poor and cheap, and I don't care if people see if I visit their site or LJ.
- ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) darththalia says you can also use AdBlock Plus:
http://adblockplus.org/en/
THALIA SAYS: Go to preferences, then add filter, and type in http://*.icons.ljtoys.org.uk. I subscribed to the EasyList filter, and it seems to be catching a decent amount of stuff.
So. If you like the idea of seeing who's visiting, set up an account. In a way, too, I think it will level the playing field for people who aren't comfortable with it.
Oh! There's also an LJ Toys community, to watch for updates and so on.
http://community.livejournal.com/ljtoys/profile
Feel free to discuss if you like. If you've never heard of it and it creeps you out, I understand, but please realize, again, that it's not a new concept at all. I wanted to post this to let my flist and anyone visiting know that it exists, that yes, I use it because I like to see who's reading my LJ, and that you can use it too. In other words, don't shoot the messenger. :) |
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cynical