Would you let this bother you or....

[Catnip]

am I being unreasonable?

A few months ago I started a couple of blogs to showcase my photography. I am not a professional, just someone who enjoys capturing my surroundings.
I write very little about me personally but do feature self-portraits and pictures of my guy.

I have enjoyed watching the hits to my sites go up and happy to see return visitors. I have my friends IPs labeled because I want to keep track of friends and strangers.

There are a couple of women who are I guess for lack of a better word, are "stalkers" of my guy.

Both of them drive my hits up high. One of them checks my sites several times of a day.

I decided to stop posting pictures/videos of him in an attempt to make them go away. I even posted a declaration that nothing of personal nature would be made public.

One of them started using a "secure proxy" but I still know it's her, duh....

I want people to come see my photography and I feel the hits from these two just mess up my stats.

Does this sound unreasonable?

If I sound paranoid its because I had my experience with a real "stalker" for two years so I am a bit sensitive.

Opinions?

[Car Guy]

You have to know that anything put on a publicly accessible web page can be viewed by anybody, and for any purpose.

It's a sad thing but their are many people who very much enjoy searching out as much as they can about people. And it seems the more information you give them the more determined they are to find out more.

If you don't want their hits inflating your stats you ca block their IP in your project. If you wish to block them from your site, well that requires action at the server level. Of course if they are determined they will just use a proxy anyways!

[Catnip]

You have to know that anything put on a publicly accessible web page can be viewed by anybody, and for any purpose.

It's a sad thing but their are many people who very much enjoy searching out as much as they can about people. And it seems the more information you give them the more determined they are to find out more.

If you don't want their hits inflating your stats you ca block their IP in your project. If you wish to block them from your site, well that requires action at the server level. Of course if they are determined they will just use a proxy anyways!

I have to keep reminding myself he's a musician and attention is going to follow him....

I just decided to stop posting things and see if that makes them go away.
If it keeps on, then I guess I will have to go one of the routes you suggested.

Thank you for your reply. :)

[Car Guy]

Like all entertainers, musicians give up some of their privacy in their profession. And some people thrive on being a "detective" and getting as much personal information about someone as they can. The internet makes that much easier than it was 20 years ago.

Remember that every bit of information you give out about yourself on the internet can come back to you later.

[Sarve]

I wouldn't worry about it. You posted the photos so people would look at them. That's what they're doing. You can't control how often they look at them. Just don't post anything on your blog or on Flickr, which I noticed you're using, that you don't want anyone to see or copy. Looking at your photos on a computer is pretty harmless. Showing up on your doorstep is something to be concerned about.

[Catnip]

I wouldn't worry about it. You posted the photos so people would look at them. That's what they're doing. You can't control how often they look at them. Just don't post anything on your blog or on Flickr, which I noticed you're using, that you don't want anyone to see or copy. Looking at your photos on a computer is pretty harmless. Showing up on your doorstep is something to be concerned about.

I figure they will give up when they no longer see anymore pictures or videos.
I get the occasional person who asks me for "nekkid" pictures but I ignore them and they go away. :grin:

[Macrovertigo]

Why not do your photo essays on a blogspot account, I know they let you limit access or otherwise make a blog private.

[Philbert]

Sometimes it's not really stalking, but like a game. For example there was this video I've seen with a girl in it and I became curious who this girl was each time I saw the video. In the background there's a radio playing and that was like a clue. I felt like a detective solving a mystery. The radio was playing 80's / early 90's music, then at one point if I turned the volume up I could hear the DJ say the station's callsign, another clue!. A quick Google search and I found the station with those letters that played "classic rock". So she (or at least the video shooting locaton) was somewhere in the vecinity of Toronto, Canada. It was just a fun game to me and I solved the case, so that's where it ended.