PokeFarm: Where the girls are?

[HMTKSteve]

This site reaches over 20,705 monthly uniques, of which 12,106 (58%) are in the U.S. The site is popular among a college educated, 60-100k HH income bracket, rather female crowd.The typical visitor visits gamewinners.com and reads Yahoo! Tech.

Don't believe me? Check it out (http://www.quantcast.com/pokefarm.com)

[belnumcree]

That's really interesting. :D I wonder where they pull some of that info from though? lol

[BugCatcher6]

Rather a Female crowd, I only know of 6 or 7 Females, course there could be more babaels out there.

[toys4life]

:shock: WOW! That is a really cool informational site!!!

I love the info about the forum that says that 13% of us are addicts and that the addicts make up 75% of the visits!

Pokerfarm is more addictive then Crack!!!

Okay public service announcement... "Hey kids, crack is whack!" Don't do drugs, stay in school, and get counseling for this horribly fun addiction that we all have! :wink: hehe

[WestCoastNinja]

Wow out of all the visitors only 14% visit the forums! :o

[Jhamin]

According to their FAQ (http://www.quantcast.com/faq.jsp#How_do_you_collect_your_data.3F) they are tracking this stuff by matching the IPs of the unique visitors to the site with demographics information provided by ISPs. If that is the case then what you are actually seeing is the info for the person who pays the internet bills for the forum members.

So when a 14 year old comes to Pokefarm from a computer connected to a cable-modem her parents are paying for, Quantcast is showing that as a visit by her parents.


In other words, I'm guessing some of the demographics are skewed by the assumptions that Quaintcast is making, but these are probably pretty goods indicators of what kinds of families visitors are coming from.

[BugCatcher6]

According to their FAQ (http://www.quantcast.com/faq.jsp#How_do_you_collect_your_data.3F) they are tracking this stuff by matching the IPs of the unique visitors to the site with demographics information provided by ISPs. If that is the case then what you are actually seeing is the info for the person who pays the internet bills for the forum members.

So when a 14 year old comes to Pokefarm from a computer connected to a cable-modem her parents are paying for, Quantcast is showing that as a visit by her parents.


In other words, I'm guessing some of the demographics are skewed by the assumptions that Quaintcast is making, but these are probably pretty goods indicators of what kinds of families visitors are coming from.

Jhamin use big words he-he.

[Kay]

How exactly does that site get its numbers? How would it know whether the visitors are college educated or not, or if there are kids in the household? What if the internet is provided by the apartment complex, or the college campus, etc.? I'm just curious, also a little weirded out if they really can get that kind of information just from an ISP...

[Gamegeezer]

Yeah, that information can be pretty scary if put into the wrong hands..........@_@

[Jhamin]

There are lots of places where information about you is publicly available. Most people don't think about how many.

For example, in the state of California the following information is publicly available to anyone who knows how to ask for it:
Your name
Birth date
Home and mailing addresses
License number
Physical description
Social Security number
Failures to appear in court
Failures to pay traffic fines
License status (valid, revoked, suspended, expired)
Major traffic convictions for the past seven years
Minor traffic convictions for the past three years
Name of the person who owns a vehicle
Residential and mailing addresses of the vehicle's registered owner
Vehicle year, make and body style
Year the vehicle was bought by the current owner and previous owners' names and addresses going back three years
License plate number; vehicle identification number
Name of the lien-holder if the loan for the vehicle has not yet been paid in full


Thats the stuff the government will give out to anyone who asks. Do you have one of those grocery store member cards? Did you give them your home address? How about that bookstore discount card? Do you think they keep that stuff in a vault? Often they sell it to anyone who makes them an offer.

Did you know that you can often get a lot of personal information about anyone who owns a domain name?

For example, knowing the web address of Pokefarm.com, depending on how Steve registered his domain name I can probably get his full name and home address & post a satellite picture of it on the forum. None of this would involve "hacking the internet" or using any special security clearance. All you would have to do is know where all the publicly available domain registration records are.

(Actually, I started look this stuff up to make a point, but then realized how creepy would be and stopped part way through).

I do computer networking for a Hospital chain out here in the frozen wastes of Minnesota, so I know the basics about how this works. I just do networking. I'm not a security guy. I know a computer security guy who works for a bank. One of the big ones. It's scary what he knows how to find out without breaking any laws.

Now, I'm not saying that the world is out to get us and we all need to wrap our heads in tinfoil to keep the government out. We live in an information age. It is naive to think that there isn't a lot of information floating around. Often, it's information about us.

When we were in school, it wasn't weird that people could figure out where our locker was or what our class schedule was. It wasn't secret. You just kind of assumed that most folks wouldn't bother with that stuff about you, but if someone wanted to find it, they could. Well, we live in the new Millenium and stuff like where we went to school, where we live, where we work, and probably sometime soon where we shop will be avalible to anyone who really cares to find out. Welcome to 2008.

[HMTKSteve]

There is a script on site that runs and tells Quantcast all about the traffic on site. I also run a few other tracking scripts and the general Webalizer data that I get directly from the server.