MSN Messenger has had similar (albeit fairly clunky and/or unreliable) web-based programs available for quite a while now which let you find out if somebody who appears to be offline actually is offline, or if in fact they've simply blocked you. I did actually use one once when I'd had a heated IM-based row with a girlfriend over - well, it could have been anything to be honest, let's say it was about potatoes - and suspected that she'd blocked me, a suspicion backed up by surreptitious use of the block detector. I phoned her up (in hindsight the fact that we preferred to IM rather than chat on the phone probably says a lot about why that particular relationship never led to marriage and six children) and told her that I knew I'd been blocked and wanted an apology. My speech was delivered with the same kind of self-righteousness asserted by those mad women who hire actresses to chat up their husbands in order to prove their paranoid suspicions that they're being cheated on. In retrospect, using a block-detector wasn't quite the noble and entirely justified move I thought it was at the time, but I did get an apology - and one only slightly marred by the accompanying accusations that I was a paranoid weirdo. Hurrah!

→ Posted by: Marcus at July 16, 2004 3:20 AM

Having friends who are cyberstalkers with their gfs/bfs/dolphin lovers, I can't imagine this is particularly useful.

Anyone who's savvy/sad enough to use this will also presumably be logged in to their IM all day on a big fat broadband connection at work/home, and will notice anyway. All this does is concentrate the data - but how useful is this data, really? Unless of course you've made a pact with your gf/bf/dolphin not to go on AIM!

→ Posted by: badly dubbed boy at July 16, 2004 11:15 AM

Having arguments with your girlfriend via IM. What a modern world we live in!

→ Posted by: Andy Budd at July 19, 2004 11:29 AM