I figured I would take the time to put together this little fact finding note about "Profile Spying" and "See Who Deleted You" facebook features. Hopefully it will serve to relay the correct information about these two specific subjects, to you and other facebook users. Facebook has been plagued with rogue applications and spammy post claiming to provide these sought after facebook feature for a long time now. Taking the time to read and share this information will save you and your friends from falling for the many scams dealing with this, you will see. *Please share this with your friends. :)
Profile Spying Q&A:
Question:Can I see who visited, viewed, stalked or spied on my facebook profile?Answer:No. Be aware that there is NO feature on Facebook which allows the viewing of profile visitors and considering the privacy implications of such functionality, it will probably never be allowed. Tracking someone’s surfing habits on Facebook is against Facebook's privacy policy and the terms and conditions of the service. It is stated as such in their developers manual. No application or game is allowed to insert any such coding that pulls any sort of information beyond the profile content that is required for the app or game to function. Therefore, any message or application that claims otherwise is most definitely a SCAM.
Can I See Who Deleted Me Q&A:
Question:Is it possible for me to automatically see when someone ignores my friend request, De-friends me, re-names their profile, deletes or deactivates their account?Answer:Officially, No. Facebook doesn’t provide a notification for this type of account activity either.
*However, with that being said, I have to point out that there is 3 "working" 3rd Party tools for Friend Deletion Detection.
Note:
I personally have not had the chance to use any of these tools, So this is not a "Recommendation" by me to use them. I will test these tools a some point in the future and update this note with my findings. For now I will relay the information that I have receive from what I believe to be trusted sources.
Delete Checker
"Delete Checker keeps track of which friends deleted you on Facebook. It also keeps track of when friends deactivate their account, ignores your friend request or renames their profile. You can setup Delete Checker to post insults about deleted friends to your wall.The facebook app has been recommend to me by a facebook friend of mine. He too, knows a scam when he see it, so I know this can't be one. Plus I see the tool post to his profile when someone removes hims, ignores his request, when one of his friends changes their name or has deactivate their account.
2: Goggle Chrome Add-on
Facebook Friends Checker
"Regularly scans your Facebook friends list to check whether anyone has removed you. This Chrome add-on was brought to my attention the other day by a Active member of Scam Sniper. The Chrome add-on works by storing a "cookie" to your Computer once you log in to facebook. This "Cookie" holds the names of everyone in your friends list. The add-on then checks your friends list against the data stored in the cookie at regular intervals and notifies you if there has been a change. Note: Please realize this add-on works with a browser "cookie". That means if you regularly clear your browsers cache you will more than likely delete this "cookie" with it. No cookie means this will not work.
3: For Firefox: "A Grease Monkey User Script"
Facebook Friends Checker
When the User Script detects that someone in your current friends list has dis-appeared, a message will appear, informing you about who it was and then it will give you a link to their profile page. Note: If you don't know what "Grease Monkey" is, I suggest you not worry about this tool. You can type the term into Google.com and learn more about it. Until you do, skip trying to use this..
How it Works:
Any time a page is loaded on Facebook, the script will run and it will follow the following basic algorithm;
- Load a page on Facebook in the background with a list of all of your friends.
- Go through each of these friends and add them to a list.
- Compare this list with the list saved the last time the script checked your friends.
- If someone was on the list before who isn't now, post the box informing the user.
- Save the new list of friends over the old one.
- Save the current time as the last checked time.
Verification it works:
It's been installed 5,948,492 times.Mashable Social Media has also run a story on it here:Facebook Quitters: Find Out When Someone De-Friends You
Note: Please be aware, as with any application, Browser plug-in, add-on or user script, these will interact with information within your browser and/or facebook profile. These are 3rd party tools, if you are worried about information leakage or mining, use caution and investigate the apps thoroughly. Remember, if you don't have a lot of friends, there may be no need for these tools. You can simply keep track of your friends by paying attention to the people in your list. Use friends or group lists to organize friends. Keep close friends and family together, keep distant contacts or game friends separated. Think about this, if a distant contact or game friend disappears and doesn't try to contact you back or reconnected, it is more than likely that they have moved on.
About Black Knight
I am a computer repair technician with over 15 years experience and have been computer security and information privacy enthusiast for the last 4 years. I've helped literally thousands of individuals fix their issues by offering help through various blogs and Facebook pages. I like teaching myself and others new things, and believe in freely sharing knowledge.
I saw the comment you left, i updated my post with the Q&A from facebook and put a link to your blog for more info on other scams.
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