Ryan McFarland

Quite a few people seem to have had their myspace profiles hijacked and are having two periods posted in the comments of their friends. The post is a hyperlink to http://getweddy.info/goahead.php which prompts the download of profilewatcher_setup.exe to the user’s system. According to Zeropoint’s FAQ about their Profile Watcher tool it says that it contains no spyware. I find it odd that quite a few people have these posts and the software that it points to says they are not spyware. I’d definitely recommend staying away from this “service”.

If you want to set up a true tracking service for your myspace profile check out my comparison of a few of the myspace profile trackers.

[Edit: 3/26/07] A friend was having troubles with his year and a half old computer. He could not connect to the internet and it took forever for his computer to shut down. I looked at his list of installed programs and Profile Watcher was listed. I uninstalled it and removed it from the registry. Without even rebooting the computer was able to connect and then was able to restart quickly. Stay away from Profile Watcher!

Using the same concept that Kevin used in this post i conjured up some tweaks of AXS so i can see hits to my site and my myspace profile at the same time. This will give you the visitor’s IP address, their domain, and some other information.

1 - You have to have AXS installed on your own server. Use the automated install tool - it really is easy. You need your own host - this can’t be done on your myspace page or a blogspot account. If you don’t have your own domain and host this method will not work for you.

2 - Upload an image to your site and give it a name that is distinctive and useful. Perhaps “myspace.png” or something like that.

3 - Go to your ax-admin.pl or ax-admin.cgi page on your server. Bookmark this page. On the bottom left click on “Instructions for Tagging HTML Pages” note the code needed to direct hits to your logs.

4 - Study up on the help files for AXS here.

5 - Make a URL something like this:
http://www.path/to/my/ax.pl?http://www.path/to/my/myspace.png

6 - Trick myspace into accepting the link by shortening it with YATUC or another URL abbreviator.

7 - Insert this code into your “Headline” section of your myspace profile.

8 - View your profile a few times.

9 - Go back to your bookmarked AXS admin panel. Click on “View in Database Format” and you should see your visits listed.

10 - Hit the back button. Select some check boxes like “Browser wars” “Visitor second level domain” and “Hits by day of week” and under “filter string” enter “myspace.png” or whatever your tracking image is. Then click on “View in graphical format” in the middle of the page.

11 - Have fun with it!

Once again, My brother has me started with a friendship networking thing - MySpace. This one combines Friendster (see the previous post) with HotOrNot and an online journal.