Third Party Email Collection / Login Gadgets Being Detected As Malware / Phishing

Recently, we've had several reports from naive blog owners, with blogs locked for malware or phishing, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

Some owners have found accessories, such as email address collection or even a convenient login gadget, offered by helpful third parties. Installing the new gadgets, they have later received the well known (automated detection) notice, from Blogger Support.

Both third party email collection, and convenient login gadgets, are righteously classified as malware.

• Email address collection, run through a third party database, can provide hackers a starting point for account and blog theft, using botnets - or the account holder may be added to email distribution lists for spammers.
• Third party login gadgets are blatant phishing tools - and can be used for immediate account and blog theft.

Neither accessories are good, for your readers.

Any such third party accessories are just hacking / phishing tools. When you install this on your blog, it becomes hacking / phishing enabled by you.

You can collect email addresses, if you wish - using a FeedBurner Email Distribution gadget, which allows your readers to subscribe to a feed from your blog. If you want to offer your readers a convenient Blogger / Google login, add an HTML gadget, targeting

http://www.blogger.com

and let them use the standard Google "One account" login screen.

Don't be a dupe for the hackers, phishers, and spammers - keep your blog clean, and keep your blog online. The future of your blog, and your readers well being, requires your wise decisions.

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