Follow This Blog

According to my Blogger information, there are 31 people who are following this blog. Which is pretty interesting. I can go click on the little images and quickly find my way to their blogs.

I didn't count how many blogs I am following. Not quite 31 though. Maybe that means I have been remiss in following blogs. In truth, what really matters is that I go to blogs and actually read what the writers have to offer. Maybe even leave a comment or two.

I did learn something about blogger than I am not all that fond of though.

You can follow a blog privately or anonymously. What that means, is that I could have more than 31 followers (and I know that I do) and I wouldn't know about it.

Really, that shouldn't be a big deal, right? Well here is why it is kind of a big deal to me. By following this blog, a person can read all that I write using this thing called Google Reader. They don't have to visit this blog to actually read what I have written. I go through the trouble of using a sitemeter to allow me to see who my visitors are, and someone can get around that by never visiting my blog, but still getting to read what I wrote.

So what happens if you would like for someone to not read your blog unless they are going to read it openly? Well, if they are following privately, you can't do anything about it. If someone follows your blog openly (like the 31 mentioned), you can go in and "block" them from following your blog. But if someone does it privately, nothing you can do about it. You can't block them from following because you don't even know they are following your blog.

So for anyone out there who might be worrying about stalkers. Guess what? Google (blogger) made it totally easy for someone to play the part of a stalker and you would never know about it. The only thing you can do is make your blog private and pick and choose who is allowed to read. The downfall of going private is that you won't get any new readers, because they won't see what you have written and have the chance to decide they want to read more.

So I am now trying to get word to Google (blogger) to remove this stalker loophole. There is a chance that someone would make their blog private if they were worried about someone they know reading their blog, and this loophole gives people a way to get around that. Owners of blogs should have every opportunity to use tools to know who is reading what they wrote, in case they want to make changes to their blog as a result of who is reading.

In the end. I know this about my blog. I DO NOT want anyone stalking me and reading my words in a way that I can't know about it. If anyone is going to read what I wrote, then I really want them to do it in a way that I can see that I had a visitor. Now that I know it happened to me, I find that I really do not appreciate it, and I really do not appreciate how it was done behind my back.


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Update: If you use blogger (as this blog does), you can go into the settings, under the settings tab, select Site Feed, then there is an option for Allow Blog Feeds. This option can be set to 'Full' (mine was), Short, or none. With full, the blog can be read privately without anyone knowing. In the short option, they can only read the first paragraph (or first 255 characters whichever is shorter). With none they cannot read anything and will have to actually visit your blog in order to read what is written. At least that is what I have been told so far. I'll update again if I learn anything new.