I think so. This is especially true if the visitor happens to be underage.
The first time that I saw my IP address and city posted in a widget of a blog that I had landed on, I was outraged. When I visit a site, I only want the webmaster to know my IP address, not every person visiting the site.
If a site uses a widget that displays visitors' IP addresses, they should receive warning of that before they actually are redirected to a page that does that.
And, really, what purpose does this traffic widgets serve? When they're visible to every visitor on the site, nothing. When viewed by the webmaster, of course the webmaster could obviously use it to find out how visitors are landing on his blog. However, putting traffic widgets on any public page is just an attempt to fill empty space, or if the widget contains links to the site that the user came from, an attempt to grab some PR juice.
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Hey there p1nk g33k
Thanks for all of the useful comments on Bradblogging.com - Now to return my opinion on this post:
"Breaking the law?" If that is breaking the law, then so is Wordpress (it logs your IP when you leave a comment) and so does Statcounter.com (it logs your IP address when you visit) - Should we get rid of all these great services just because of IP recording? I certainly hope not
"If a site uses a widget that displays visitors' IP addresses, they should receive warning of that before they actually are redirected to a page that does that." Now, I'm not a plugin coder, but I seriously doubt that somebody that visits a website and receives a "Warning" that if they visit the site, their IP will be displayed publicly for others to view, they'll most likely just go back to Google and look for another site.. I'm going to throw a made up figure that 80% of people don't know what their IP address is..
Brad Blogging.com - Personal Blog Tips And Blog Help’s last blog post..4 Fool-Proof Ways To Fill Your Advertising Space
I know that almost every site you visit logs IP addresses and I don't mind that. But, in this post, I was only referring to the widgets that actually display the IP addresses on the site for everyone to see.