# Friday, September 16, 2005
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I have had a lot of experience recently with detecting and tracking visitors to my websites that have an unusual interest in what I have to say.  Some of this is automated but a lot is still just grunt work.  I could do a lot more automation--to the point I think I could sell the service or perhaps the program.  I'm not sure on this last point.  Their may sufficient false positives that a quick look by a human eye is needed to make the final judgment.  Anyway, there are two things I would like to ask of my fellow bloggers and webmasters:

  1. Would you be interested in a service that monitors your log files and was capable of giving you a notice within a few hours that someone was taking an unusual interest in you?  It might prevent you from being Dooced.
  2. Do you have access to log files that I could use for test and development purposes?  I would even pay small amounts of money for log files from people who have actually been Dooced or "investigated."  "Normal" log files would also be needed but I wouldn't pay money for those.

Send me an email if you have some input.  Use nodooce@joehuffman.org

Joe Huffman  Friday, September 16, 2005 12:50:29 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [2]  |  Related posts:
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Friday, September 16, 2005 3:39:15 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
As a consumer and blog-reader, I think I'd take issue with bloggers investigating my activities from their end. I would most likely stop visiting blogs if I knew that their owners were tracking my visits.
Mike L
Friday, September 16, 2005 4:17:01 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Anyone that has a Sitemeter (or similar) icon on their website is allowing anyone to track your visits. Click on the numbers on the lower right column of this blog where it says something like "37,575 visitors since December 10, 2004". Then click on "By Details" to get a clue of what is available on your visits to everyone. Check out the following pages to see what can be done with some additional work:

http://www.pnnl.info/Report.htm
http://www.pnnl.info/PrepTouchBase.htm

Those log files almost always exist. It is only a question of whether they are used or not. By default you do NOT have any privacy when browsing the web. There are ways to give yourself some privacy but it's not by default. And even then it's very hard to foil a determined investigator. PNNL probably won't read this comment and it doesn't matter a whole lot if they do, they think they are being clever now but their activities are still quite transparent.
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