Who Checks Your Profile? The Most Popular Application Thats Never Actually Existed

In a digital world where users are encouraged to socialize and share with each other, it may be an interesting notion to know how many times people visit you and check out your profile when you are using social networking site Facebook. After all, the ability to perform such tracking was once available on sites like MySpace and Friendster.

You could check how often your parents or spouse check up on you, find out if any old schoolmates are reading up on your developments or perhaps, most obviously, discover if you have any potential secret admirers.

However, like with most features regarding Facebook, there would be obvious privacy concerns with this. Imagine the flip side of this coin – would you want people knowing each and every time you visited their profile? Imagine you were the parent, the spouse, the old school friend or the secret admirer…

This article deals with the plethora of scams using the bait of allowing a user to check who visits their Facebook profile and how often. With the beginning of the Facebook timeline era underway, Facebook users can expect to see a whole host of these scams reappearing, merely replaced “profile” with “timeline” – e.g. the Timeline stalker app!

It’s for this reason that Facebook does not allow such tracking in any way. You cannot check who visits your profile the most, or how often. There is no setting, no option and no avenue to obtain this kind of information. This means you cannot see who is “stalking” your profile. There is no such thing as a “profile checker”, “profile analyser”, “profile seeker”, “profile peeker”, “profile tracker”, “profile spy”, “Facebook spy”, or “profile watcher” and other incarnations of such names. (expect to see respective variants for the timeline to appear). Any websites or Facebook applications that purport to offer such a feature for Facebook are nothing more than cons. That information is simply not made public.

Typical Application page that uses the profile stalker method as bait

Scams…

But alas there is no shortage of applications and websites that assert they offer such a feature. So much so that archiving each and every one would be pointless because they pop-up every day. Facebook applications, for example, are specifically popular with claiming they can tell a user who is visiting their profile and how often. Typically the application shelf life is only a matter of hours before being disabled by Facebook yet new ones offering the same features are constantly popping up.
The fact is that applications and sites like these are often scams, designed to trick users into biting. Scammers know that many Facebook users would like that information, and may be willing to, for example, complete a survey, or install an application in order to get it. The reality is that when there are lots of people wanting certain information, there will always be scammers who claim to provide that information. Even if it doesn’t even exist.

Image courtesy of nakedsecurity.sophos.com, image shows a typical message that “stalker” apps automatically post from victims accounts when installed

Is there any way to track who visits you profile?

Often we hear traces of speculation that one can determine who may visit your profile by how often they appear in your “featured friends” section or how often they appear in your newsfeed – such selections are based on the amount of interaction you have with such friends on the site but does ‘interaction’ include profile views? Facebook hold their selection algorithms close to their chest but have previously affirmed that  such selections are based purely on public interaction, and not profile views.

With that said, there is literally no way one can obtain that information. Facebook users will likely be forever in the dark as to who visits their profile, and how often.

Ways that “Profile Stalker” applications fool victims…

No matter how many times we say that such applications do not exist, there are always many who contend this, claiming they installed a Facebook “Profile Stalker” application and it worked. Fact is that they were duped since there are two ways that Facebook applications specifically can fool victims into thinking that they have actually done the job.
The first method is simply by providing the user with a random selection of the user’s friends and claiming they are the people who visit the users profile the most often. Applications can access a user’s friends list so are perfectly capable of obtaining a number of random friends and presenting those friends as a user’s “stalkers”. The user sees the list of friends and naturally assumes the application has worked.

The second method is a little more advanced, in that the application acts like a “fan check” application. Applications that provide a service such as a “fan checker” actually provide you with a list of friends ordered in the amount of public interactions you have had with them, such as comments, wall posts, likes and shares. Essentially the application counts the amount of interactions you have had with your friends within a certain time period and orders them and thus provides you with your “top friends”. Of course this method will provide more relevant friends since they are likely going to be closer friends than you would get with a simple random selection, meaning this method is more likely going to fool a user into thinking they are the friends who visited their profile the most often, despite the interactions used to order the friends having nothing to do with profile views.

So…

So don’t be fooled by any application, website or other rumours that claim they can tell you who views your profile. Such features are non-existent and more than likely trying to scam you in some way. The fact is that such features are privacy nightmares and Facebook isn’t likely going to risk yet another significant clash with privacy activists just to enable a rather trivial feature. For now, tracking your profile views is not only impossible, but strictly against Facebook’s terms of service.

Posted by thatsnonsense.com