How to anonymously follow someone on Twitter

Tom Otterness sculpture: Cat stalks bird stalking worm

Want to follow someone on Twitter without them receiving the usual “Darren is stalking you on Twitter” notification email? Or want to follow a business competitor on Twitter without appearing in their list of followers? Here’s how.

For whatever reason you want to follow someone on Twitter without them knowing – be it a romantic interest, the CEO of a rival company or a topic or person of interest that really shouldn’t be shared – we’ve put together three simple methods for doing so.

Method one

Method one is the most straightforward method of all but perhaps the most creepy. Just create a fake Twitter account excluding any personally identifiable information and stalk until your heart’s content.

Method two

Method two involves private Twitter lists. Lists allows you to get updates from one or more Twitter users without having to follow them. They don’t get notified by email and as long as the list is private their inclusion will never be publicised.

Go to your Twitter.com profile

Click on Lists and then the Create list button

Give the list a title, be sure to select Private then click Save list

Now begin adding people to your newly created private list

Method three

Method three is one for the geeks. It involves creating an RSS feed for a specific user on Twitter and adding this to your favourite RSS client. Our own editor Piers Scott has created this really useful tool for easily generating an RSS feed of a Twitter user, Twitter list and a Twitter search.

If you can think of any other methods of Twitter stalking please let us know in the comments.