If you have a blog, you may have to deal with trolls who leave nasty comments, even anonymous comments, you can find out exactly who they are, and even see a picture of their house! Here is what to do.
1. Install a site tracker or stat counter on your blog. I use Sitemeter and it is free. I use it on all of my sites and blogs.
2. Log into Sitemeter. You will get a summary page like this:
3. Next, you can identify WHO'S ON, or click on REFERRALS to see what site referred the visitor to you. You can also click on ENTRY PAGES or EXIT PAGES to see what pages visitors landed on, and the last page they looked at before they left. If you are identifying a troll, the last page they were on will be the post they commented on. The time will also sync up with the timestamp on the comment.
3. For the purpose of this demo, let's look at WHO'S on my blog right now. The screen looks like this:
4. Click on the little number to the left under the DETAIL column. You will get a screen with everything about that visitor, right down to the resolution and color depth of their computer monitor. Find the line that says LAT/LONG under LOCATION:
5. Next, take that latitude and longitude and plug them into Google Maps. You will see a map of the location and a photo of the building at that address.
6. Now that you have the troll's address, you can plug it into Google or any website that finds people by their address, and discover their identity.See, you can be a detective, too. This certainly won't stop the trolls from visiting, but at least you can find out who they are. Remember that sending threats or hate comments is a Federal crime. Blog comments fall under this law. Do not hesitate to identify these people and report them to your local authorities - now you can easily find out their identity and get the law on your side.
8 comments:
Wow, who knew your comments could be traced back to your physical location? Bet not too many people know this, including bloggers! Kinda makes me wonder about all the other ways we have become traceable in the digital age!
This is actually a little scarey that people can trace you to your home address.
Good cyber sleuthing Suzanne!
I just don't "get" the whole trolling thing. Sounds like a real waste of valuable time that could be used attending to their business - but then again there are some folks who marinate in resentment. Even if you had a food and recipe blog, they would find something to gripe about.
love it! That's a great one to know:) Thanks for sharing that!
Wow, that is really great info. Thanks Suzanne!
Wow, thanks Suzanne. I had no idea! I'll be installing Sitemeter on my blog just for kicks. It's a bit scary that we can be traced to our houses though. Geesh!
Hi Suzanne,
I use ip2loaction.com to give me a quick reference of the visitors country although I find getclicky.com is a great tracking software that is free to use and shows the visitors actual actions on your site in real time.
I haven't actually had any experiences with people posting nasty comments on my blog but I do get a lot of spam and I would assume they are only jealous of your blog and if I did get any I'd simply ignore them and delete them. great tip about this site Suzanne, thanks
John B
http://auctionguerilla.com
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