Myspace Trackers

Leaving a Trace on Myspace?

You don't have to watch the evening news regularly to know there are plenty of good reasons why CuteBlonde13 would want to know if WackoPerv56 has been spending hours gazing at her Myspace site. Myspace has been under fire from many sides recently because it is a means for millions of teenagers to freely exchange sensitive personal information -- and it's sometimes just as easy for outsiders to abuse the open access Myspace offers.

That's why some Myspacers are now using "trackers" that offer to keep them informed about everyone who has been visiting their pages. These services claim to provide detailed information about every visitor, plotting the locations of visitors on a map and giving a link to their pictures and profiles. There are many such services - MStracker, HitsLink, ProfileSnitch, Hitslog, TrackMyspace and TheSpaceTracker among them. Trakzor, which developed a 2.0 version recently, is the most sophisticated and best designed among a pretty sorry looking group.

Adding a Tracker to Your Myspace Page

To use a Myspace tracker, you open an account at a site, download a tracking code and insert it into your Myspace page. Anyone visiting your Myspace page will be tracked thereafter. However, you will ONLY be able to identify and access the profile of a visitor IF that person also has an account with the same tracking service.

If the visitor does not have an account, the tracking service can identify them only via their IP address, which at best can provide an approximate guess at their (or their ISP's) physical location. In my test of the Trakzor service, the stats showed one visitor to my test site, but listed their city as Dulles, VA. That's actually the location of AOL (that person's service provider) which is a thousand miles from the visitor's home.

Is It Safe To Add a Myspace Tracker?

Here's another downside... once you have an account with a tracking service, any other member of that service will be able to track YOUR access to THEIR Myspace pages - including entry into your profile. The implications are obvious. The price of knowing who has been watching you is someone else's knowledge that you've been watching them. Some sites also offer tracker blocking options, either built into the tracking service, or based on a block list of known trackers. Trakzor removed this option in their latest version because too many people were using it, making the entire system of even less value.

The tracking services claim that the more people open accounts with them, the more useful their systems will be. But right now, the numbers using individual tracking services are miniscule (about 1/10 of one percent) in relation to the numbers using Myspace. In any case, it's not likely that WackoPerv56 will have helpfully joined Trakzor or ProfileSnitch, so it's not a very good or reliable method of easily identifying unwelcome visitors.

Many Myspace users still find tracking services useful. If a circle of friends all decide on one tracking system, each member can see how often the others eyeballed their pages. But that's networking, not security.

A Zephyr On The Horizon

Meanwhile, Myspace is developing a system which will allow parents to keep track of their child's Myspace use. It's called Zephyr and is expected to be released soon. It's unclear exactly how much access it will give parents to their children's accounts. And since Zephyr will place the onus on parents to ensure that children give their real ages in their profiles, it remains to be seen how useful it will be.

Other social networking sites such as Facebook and Xanga don't allow tracking services - and they have opted not to join Myspace in the development of Zephyr. As with so much in cyberspace, technology is way ahead of the law. There are some serious privacy and security issues tied up in the use of Myspace, trackers, blockers and stalkers. We'll have to wait and see how it shakes out in the courts.

Got comments about Myspace privacy or trackers? Post your thoughts below...