naienko
2007-01-19 06:33 pm UTC (link)

Every possible kind of hit-tracking software (not COUNTERS, software) captures ips. That's how a software can tell you things like how many hits you got vs how many pages vs unique hits.

Also, I think it's naive to think one can traipse around the internet without leaving some kind of trail -- those who /really/ don't want to be tracked will find a way not to be tracked. Either way IP tracking is and has always been a tried-and-true method of dealing with troublesome folk, and without capturing them you can't separate. Did that make sense?

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eviemouse
2007-01-19 06:45 pm UTC (link)

I don't use it, as I don't like the idea of doing something like that without telling people, and I'm sure that people would object if they knew. Yes, of course, we all leave trails on the internet, but this system of hiding trackers in mood icons and putting together information from all users to assign IP addresses to people... I don't know. Though in cases like Msscribe's it could come quite useful if many people were using it.

Capturing IPs, I don't know. I guess much more websites do it than people are aware of, and if you want to hide your IP, there are options like using a Proxy etc. I wouldn't mind someone getting my IP, I just don't like the way LJToys compiles information about your habits of using LJ.

Whenever there is wank about privacy on LJ - like with the tracking feature, which, although people could only see public content, caused a huge outcry - I wonder if the people that are getting upset like this know what you can already do with LJToys etc. The tracking seems pretty tame compared to it.

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sugartits
2007-01-19 06:56 pm UTC (link)

I'll be honest and admit that I have a LJToys account, and I went through about a month of using it and checking it every day. I don't want to break any jurisimprudence laws, but it was more curiosity on my part (it was a social experiment!!1!). I didn't keep tabs on who checked LJ how often or anything, because I don't really care about other people's LJ habits. But it was fun to see exactly what features it offered and how the information was gathered and stuff.

I don't use it anymore, though. I changed my moodtheme back and took the image out of my userinfo because once I saw its capabilities and such it kind of got boring to me. XD I don't really care if someone finds my LJ through a community or whatever, so I stopped using it. (It was surprising to see how many years-old community posts people still looked at, though.)

In my experience, most of the people I know who used it fall into one of two groups: the first are people who are curious about it, use it a bit, and then kind of give up because it's not that interesting; and then there are the people who are paranoid or have some reason(s) to track people's IPs. Most of my experience has been with the first sort.

As for what I think... I don't really mind. People log my IP when I post comments, or visit websites, and the internet really isn't a private place. You leave an IP trail no matter what you do, unless you go to great lengths not to. Most people who use LJToys won't use it for anything sinister, and the people who would would be able to get that information without it, anyway.

/my thoughts on yaoi

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	tintin 2007-01-19 08:39 pm UTC (link)
	I did the same; I used it for about a month and then I got bored. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	dracothelizard 2007-01-19 10:46 pm UTC (link)
	I just set up an account and it certainly looks interesting, but indeed like the sort of thing you'd only use for a month because the initial 'new'ness wears off. (Reply to this)(Parent)

narcissam
2007-01-19 07:23 pm UTC (link)

I don't think there's anything wrong with LJ Toys. As said above, it's naive to think you're not leaving your IP address everywhere, unless you've taken steps not to.

But. I haven't done it myself because I notice that it can engender a rather unhealthy paranoia and anxiousness in some people, and I fear that it wouldn't do me any good that way. I'd rather not know who is stalking out my LJ. Leaving trollish comments is the only thing I care about, so I just log IPs of posters.

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herongale
2007-01-19 07:42 pm UTC (link)

By all means, use LJ Toys if it amuses you. Also, if there is a real stalker that you are worried about, knowing whether they are looking at your public LJ entries can help you decide what level of public posting you feel comfortable with. Just be careful, and I caution you against making it a habit of publically talking about the browsing habits of people you consider friends, because even if they only check periodically, they might come to feel awkward about it knowing that you are logging their visits and assigning meaning to them. No matter what you think of benign stalkers (those people who check a site 40 times a day), without the context of their entire web browsing history it's hard to judge what someone else's compulsive checking means, and it can be perilous to try to "get to the bottom" of activity that others consider, rightly so, private for THEM.

Benign stalking (which is what repeated viewing of a public LJ is) can get easily conflated with the more reprehensible kinds. I think that if someone is wanting to know who is looking at their journal and how often, that is fine. But I just caution that it can be a needlessly paranoid thing to do, and is a kind of reverse-stalking all of its own.

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	sugartits 2007-01-19 07:45 pm UTC (link)
	Agreed completely. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	singe 2007-01-20 05:52 am UTC (link)
	Uh oh, I've been benign-stalking a few people since I ride herd on their recs pages instead of bookmarking the stuff myself. Oops. I MEANT NOTHING BY IT! I'M OKAY, I SWEAR! (Reply to this)(Parent)

moonjaguar
2007-01-19 08:25 pm UTC (link)

I'm not sure what the fuss is about LJ Toys, it's nothing shiny new and doesn't strike me as aaackstalkerish. Lot of people (have their moodtheme pix stored on their sites and are able to see any hits to their entries and where they came from with the host's traffic analysis scripts (such as Webalizer, AWstats and my favorite, Latest Visitors). It's just a remotely hosted way to track where your traffic's coming from, like Sitemeter and similar trackers.

I don't know about the paid function of LJtoys but I tried the free function for the hell of it and it told me a lot less than anything I got from my domain's own toys.

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dunc
2007-01-19 08:43 pm UTC (link)

I heard about LJ Toys while doing a vanity search a few months back - I'd looked at some guys LJ once (via friendsfriends, prolly) and he mentioned me among a list of others while extolling the virtues of it as a tracker. I was kind of creeped out but intrigued by being able to see who's reading. (Once! Seriously! And I do have a bookmarked list of unfriended users I read occasionally, but he wasn't on it.)

It turned out to be pretty useless. I used it for maybe a month. My friendslist and a few people I've never heard of read me. Whee. Then they restricted the image-hosting to paid members and I decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

As for the privacy issues... What privacy issues? Every website can track who looks at it. And it's not that hard to block images from the LJ Toys domain if you're paranoid. (Good luck with the rest of the web!)

I really wish LJ would get their act together on a stat program. I don't really care if they give us usernames, but I swear by stats and I would like to know what entries are most popular and how many hits my journal as a whole gets. That's the one thing I miss about my 'real' blog.

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	naienko 2007-01-19 09:32 pm UTC (link)
	It took me about five minutes to customise a stats plugin for wordpress to work with my crosspost plugin and track my lj entries. What CMS was your 'real' blog on? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dunc 2007-01-19 09:56 pm UTC (link)
	MT 2.0. I killed it years ago, though. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	stinksap 2007-01-19 09:30 pm UTC (link)
	I got an account when I got hit with an anonymous 'friend' I suspected of being some sort of stalker. It is interesting, but really doesn't tell you all that much, and I had trouble using it because I kept getting a 'site busy, try back later' page every time I tried to look at my account. More trouble than it was worth. (Reply to this)

	ashenmote 2007-01-19 10:10 pm UTC (link)
	What happened to your F_W post? Is Lee Goldberg underage? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Yes, and he looks fantastic in a schoolgirl skirt. lottelita 2007-01-19 10:20 pm UTC (link)
	I was so busy looking for wank/batshit/funneh that I neglected to notice the date: The original wank was about two years old. And the comments from the last week (!) are relatively unwanky. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ashenmote 2007-01-19 10:50 pm UTC (link)
	Unless I'm missing something that's not deletion-worthy stuff. It would only mean you get mocked. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lottelita 2007-01-20 08:51 am UTC (link)
	My bad. Um, you can mock me here instead? With extra mockings for the deletion? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ashenmote 2007-01-20 10:53 am UTC (link)
	Nah, not when you're all reasonable like this and we have a themercymachine around to play with. (Reply to this)(Parent)

white_serpent
2007-01-19 10:38 pm UTC (link)

You know, I looked at the LJ Toys site once when everyone was talking about it, but I decided I didn't care enough to use it or block it. I've seen a few people who use LJ Toys check it constantly and get obsessed with the information they get out of it.

I guess the primary question is, why do you want to use it?

To answer your more general question, I generally assume my IP is trackable, as is a bunch of other information. So, wrong? Not really, no.

But... and there is a but... I think that people in general have an expectation of anonymity on the internet, and do and say a number of things because of that expectation of anonymity. If you start publicly posting IP addresses, talking about who has ever visited your journal, etc., people will start avoiding you. That happens for two basic reasons. One, it's a little (okay, a lot) creepy. Two, even when you know your IP is being tracked at all times, that's somewhat different than having someone post somewhere (which might be google-traceable) "so-and-so with this IP address was in my journal reading, say, my porn fanfiction." Since people don't do a very good job of keeping online stuff and RL separate, that's a tiny hop from some future employer doing a google search on you and connecting you with porn.

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	redcoast 2007-01-19 10:51 pm UTC (link)
	Only, of course, if the journal is indexed by Google. Not all are. And this only applies to people with fixed IPs. And an employer who does searches for future employee's IP addresses. What I'm saying is, it's possible, but, luckily, rather unlikely. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

white_serpent
2007-01-19 11:01 pm UTC (link)

I'm aware it's unlikely. (Though, to be fair, it should also be noted that I have static IPs, my LJ is google-indexed, and, in the past, I've done a google search on anyone I was asked to interview.)

But, likely or not, having watched people freak out anytime someone talks about IP addresses, tracking software, etc., the "What if my boss finds out?" terror is the one most frequently cited. ...And that's the same reason I've seen people delete/f'lock their journals, and so on.

My point here is that tracking is one thing; most people won't care. Publicly posting about the results of your tracking is another; most people will care, whether there's any real risk for them or not.

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	redcoast 2007-01-19 11:03 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, yeah; I wouldn't reveal an IP unless there was some SVMaria/Msscribe situation going on. (Reply to this)(Parent)

redcoast
2007-01-19 10:49 pm UTC (link)

is it wrong to capture people's IPs without their knowledge, do you think?

No. And if you feel bad about it, put a note up in your profile that you're doing it.

LJ Toys worked pretty well for me, but I got tired of imbedding the little 1x1 pixel into my posts (I don't have a paid account) and stopped doing it.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to prevent LJ Toys from logging their IPs, they can Adblock images from the LJ Toys domain.

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	qem_chibati 2007-01-19 11:29 pm UTC (link)
	I would of thought that still would of resulted in a hit when the image was pinged... Just it wouldn't load on your computer... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	redcoast 2007-01-19 11:30 pm UTC (link)
	Huh! I'm not sure. Someone should test it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

wankprophet
2007-01-19 11:19 pm UTC (link)

Nothing wrong with it. Your IP is tracked all the time. On the other hand, most sites are nowhere near as obsessive about keeping tabs as many LJToys users can be. Most website records are nothing more than computers tracking traffic, and usually your visit is only noted on some server record no-one will ever read. Frankly, if I discover a journal is using it to track people without an immediate and compelling reason -- say, a threatening stalker -- I tend to stop visiting it/take it off my friend's view because there's really only so much "personal attention" I want paid to my surfing. It's vaguely creepy and off-putting knowing that someone is specifically watching each and every hit on a website/journal you happen to visit.

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cleolinda
2007-01-19 11:31 pm UTC (link)

Full disclosure: I started using it back when I was tangentially involved in a major wank (cough), and I wanted to see if someone involved was still reading my journal (turns out they were). And then I forgot about the service entirely, even though the bugs are still on my journal. I don't know. I guess I still keep them on there in case a situation did arise, so I'd already have tracking on. It's not information I'm currently making use of, though.

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wankprophet
2007-01-20 06:27 am UTC (link)

You had a specific purpose when you first started, and I can understand natural curiosity. Now it's all background noise. It's the obsessive ones that make me wary. It makes me uncomfortable knowing someone is going, "Okay, he visited my journal 3 times last week, 5 times the week before, but a whopping 12 times this week. Hmm...he must be [insert conclusion]" It's just my personality -- I'm a private sort who doesn't want my casual habits tracked. (Fucking Bush domestic spy program...)

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	slackerbitch 2007-01-20 12:23 am UTC (link)
	is it wrong to capture people's IPs without their knowledge, do you think? I wouldn't think so. That sounds a bit like people going "How dare you get my phone number from caller ID!" YMMV. (Reply to this)

come_love_sleep
2007-01-20 02:01 am UTC (link)

Hey, if people are looking in your window, there's nothing wrong with glancing up to see their faces.

(I use LJtoys over on my LiveJournal. It's kinda nice. I can see when scary people are looking at me, I can generally tell who's leaving nasty anonymous comments--which is why I picked it up--and I get a lovely, warm, petty sense of amused contempt when I see my ex's girlfriend is checking me yet again, or said ex has stopped in to look at my latest lookatme photo post for the third time in a month.)

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	entrenous88 2007-01-20 02:11 am UTC (link)
	I'm curious -- how do you block LJ Toys? (Reply to this)

julian_black
2007-01-20 02:16 am UTC (link)

I use LJ Toys on both of my LJs, but I rarely bother to check it anymore. I originally got it because someone in RL hinted that he'd found my fandom LJ. No one in RL knows I even participate in fandom, much less have an LJ for it, so rather than rise to his bait by saying anything I signed up for LJ Toys. Since none of his known IPs have shown up in my logs yet, it looks like he was just trying to get a rise out of me.

I don't think there's anything wrong with using LJ Toys; I just assume everyone does. I also think that if you're going to make public posts you can't get fussy over who stops by to read them. If I don't want certain posts read by all and sundry, I lock them--it's that simple. And if other people don't want me reading their entries, they can do the same.

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melandry
2007-01-20 02:44 am UTC (link)

I use LJToys, but primarily because it was the first hit tracking system for LJ that I stumbled upon. All I'm really interested in is getting a vague idea of how many people look at my fanfic, not just how many leave comments. I suppose I could downgrade to something less "here are IP addresses you don't care about!" and "here is a completely inaccurate guess as to the LJ username of this hit!" intensive. Especially now that it can't track fic I post in comms.

I've got a link to the site up in my sidebar, which I consider pretty fair warning that I'm using it. Other people using it, and in less lackadaisical ways than myself, doesn't really bug me.

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	blackflag 2007-01-20 05:41 am UTC (link)
	IAWTC. (Reply to this)(Parent)

wrenlet
2007-01-20 02:59 am UTC (link)

LJToys freaks me out a wee bit, in that same way I got a little freaked when I realized whoever watches grocery store security cams has probably caught me talking to myself in the aisles. More than twice.

I just... my browsing habits are WEIRD, I'll have tabs open for days before I get around to commenting, or I'll reload a lot because someone else is having an interesting conversation, so every now and then when I get a comment emailed back to me and I notice the bug I think "Oh crap, now they think I'm a freak."

I'm harmless, swear to god, just a little OCD.

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txvoodoo
2007-01-20 04:14 am UTC (link)

I have it and use it - when I offer downloads, it helps me be able to forecast if I'm going to have a spike in traffic on my own webserver.

IP addresses are not the bugaboo people think. I've had a website since 1993, and I've been able to track IPs the entire time. That's the nature of the web. You visit a site, you use your IP.

If someone is dedicated about NOT showing their IP, they can use an anomynizer or proxy.

My having your IP doesn't mean I can follow you home, show up on your doorstep, and peek through your window.

FFS, I could do the exact same kind of thing by storing a web bug image on my own webserver and doing a grep -i ###.###.###.### filename > textfile.txt on my logs, then slapping them into a spreadsheet and crosschecking. And I could store all the IPs left in comments on my LJ. But ya know, I'm lazy and have a life and HEY not that obsessed :D

It's also RIDICULOUSLY easy to block lj-toys with firefox.

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	msilverstar 2007-01-20 08:04 am UTC (link)
	I use it and like it, esp. for obscure fic posts where I'm not sure if anyone is reading. (Reply to this)

footsie
2007-01-20 09:47 am UTC (link)

I used it for a while, back when Chancery Stone the author of danny was taking a special interest in me. (She's a bit of a psycho batshit would-be stalker. I'd also previously trashed her book in my LJ, and at the time, I was writing Danny/tractor slash. It's a looooong story.)

I've since gotten bored with it. I certainly don't follow friends with it, and I've blocked images from the LJToys site.

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	wrongly_amused 2007-01-22 10:54 pm UTC (link)
	Y'know, I first skimmed through when I caught the words "LJ Toys" and, uh, yeah, mind went off into a completely different direction than intended. (Reply to this)

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