By Joanne Lee, Straitstimes.com Editor

LAST week, a colleague blogged about China's human flesh search engines.

These are netizens who hunt people down using all the available resources online for acts they deem to be heinous. They then harass their victims until the errant individuals issue apologies for their 'crimes'.

I was flabbergasted. Who has time for such vigilante stalker-ish activities? Then I did a double take.

Hang on, Joanne, I said. You've surfed websites to see what certain persons-of-interest are up to. Doesn't that make you a stalker too?

Most of us have been guilty of such online-stalking at one point or another. If you've Googled 'Barack Obama' or 'Shiloh Pitt-Jolie', you're a borderline case. But if you've Googled your girlfriend's ex-boyfriend or that annoying friend of a friend, you've definitely engaged in nefarious stalker activity.

Welcome to Stalkers Anonymous.

Like alcoholism or drug addiction, stalking is a serious disease afflicting us all in this Wikipedia age. Okay, perhaps I exaggerate, but it's quite an addictive hobby. And like all addictions, what makes it so hard to give up is that it's fun.

Essentially, what drives it is your common, garden-variety voyeurism. Trawling through personal blogs to see what someone's up to, viewing their photo galleries to find out how fat they've become, or tracking their career to feel superior, stalking is oodles of perverse fun.

(Unless, of course, their lives are more glamorous than yours, they're slimmer and their careers are better. That's not very fun.)

In fact, it's the whole basis of social networking systems like Facebook or MySpace - enterprises that have monetised our baser instincts and turned them into revenue streams. How clever is that?

The problem is when stalking becomes an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Or when you become a victim. My sister has been the object of quite a few vitriolic blog readers who post nasty anonymous comments on her blog entries as soon as she writes an update. One wonders how many times they check her blog to be the first to 'flame' her.

On the flip side, however, some people do want to be stalked. One blogger I know ascribes wholeheartedly to the belief that 'any publicity is good publicity'. Attention to some, after all, is addictive - even of the stalker variety.

So how does one go about stalking online prey? Or prevent oneself from being preyed upon? Let me count the ways.

First, the online status checkers: Go to Blockstatus.com or Findstatus.com and you can discover in a jiffy who has blocked or deleted you on Instant Messenger programs such as MSN, Yahoo or ICQ. Other similar sites allow you to check if someone is logged on at the moment as long as you know their username - very handy for deducing if they've blocked or deleted you.

Do realise, however, that others might well use these tools to check if you have blocked or deleted them too. In such instances, employ the drastic strategy of starting a new chat account and leave them off it - if you don't want them to know you have blocked them, that is.

Next, Technorati.com: Use this handy search engine to discover if a particular person-of-interest has popped up in blogs, photos or even videos. Alternatively, type your own name and see who's been gossiping about you or stealing your photos.

Another useful tracker is Sitemeter.com or Statcounter.com. Embed these free tools on your blog and you can not only monitor how many hits your site has been getting, but you can check the Internet Protocol addresses of your visitors as well. Having identified if the nasty anonymous comments are emanating from the same source, you can then block that particular IP address.

Finally, multiply the effects of all the above by enlisting your friends in a group stalking effort. Band together and expand your collective online footprint - through the secret sharing of passwords.

Social networks are so intricately interlocked in Singapore that your person-of-interest is almost invariably a friend of a friend of a friend. Most of the time, the said person is only of interest if he or she is one or two degrees of separation away anyway. Through the liberal sharing of passwords, one can easily - and illicitly - peruse locked accounts of interest on social networking sites or blogs.

Conversely, if you know of someone on your friends' lists who shares passwords, delete that person at once or risk being stalked by his or her friends. That might create some tension, but always, always err on the side of caution, I say.

So now you're all set to stalk or guard against stalkers. Sometimes, the best defence is offence, so don't for a second think that learning the tools of the stalking trade is a bad thing.

If all else fails, you can still rely on one very simple offline strategy to fend off unwanted attention: Change your name.

Luckily for me, Joanne Lee happens to be a fairly common name and searching for me throws up lots of virtual red herrings. I've known stalkers who've added the wrong Joanne Lee on Facebook or spammed a random Joanne Lee on e-mail.

As for those who want to know how to stalk someone with a common name, I'm afraid I'm not about to share that with you.

Self-preservation. I'm sure you understand.

joannel@sph.com.sg

This article was first published in The Straits Times on August 24, 2008.