Over the weekend I received a MyBlogLog phishing email asking me to add someone I have never heard of as a co-author. While I deleted the email right away it seems the idea has worked. The spammer has attached their website to a lot of popular bloggers communities. More from John Chow
This morning, while I was checking my MyBlogLog community, I noticed that another site has mysteriously appeared on the list of sites and blog I author.
Bad enough? It gets worse, you don’t even need to phish!
Normally, in order to add a co-author to your blog the co-author has to approve you via an email link. One might think there would be a hidden security code in that link? Guess again! In order to add anyone as a co-author of any blog all you need to know is two things: 1) The blog ID 2) The member ID The first think you do is make a normal co-author request. Since you know they will never actually approve it you make up your own approval code instead.
I think there has been enough of this now that I am considering saying goodbye to MyBlogLog on my personal blog. I’m definitely not having it on here. It doesn’t offer any value that I can tell and in fact is now threatening to actually cause many bloggers problems.
If you want to have community-boosting features on your blog, best to stick to those under your own control.
Yeah, I got one of these too. I deleted it figuring it was spam. Isn’t great to know that whatever we all make popular will be shortly followed by these leeches.
I got that same email and will probably ditch MyBlogLog. It seems to be more of a popularity contest for most anyway. What does it matter how many contacts or community members you have if they never bother to visit you site? I have multiple new “contacts” daily who never look at my blog.
Yeah Dawud, it seems spammers will find a way to take advantage of anything if allowed.
Anthony, I agree, the whole point seems to be to “collect” visitors but I seem to be missing the community part …
For blogs with a small readership I can see the community-building value; but for popular blogs, the ratio of promotion value vis-a-vis spam issues doesn’t look good. Unless the high-school mentality fits into your theme…
Yeah — I noticed this and blogged about something very similar yesterday.
MyBlogLog was an OK resource when it started out. The moment it got bought by Yahoo I dumped it, partly because Yahoo is such a spam-haven, so something like this was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Bah, I clicked the link and became an author. My brother knows someone involved in Blogmemes France – it’s quite a respected site as far as I know.
Anyway in the next half an hour a slew of emails arrived in my inbox – all the messages from everyone that responded to the original emails.
MyBlogLog were pretty quick on a sunday in responding to the problem. But what a mess…
Thanks for commenting on the co-author email. I thought MyBlogLog might be something good for me, since I am new in the blogging community. Now I’m not so sure.