The Real Blogger Status

If there is anything more obnoxious than the FaceBook "Like my blog!" popup window , it's a FaceBook "Like my blog!" window, preceded by a generic popup window. It's possible that a blog which starts with two popup windows, one followed by a second, represents a blog owner who honestly wants people to enjoy her (his) blog. Even so, a blog that starts out this way is going to present a security analysis challenge, at best. Seeing the growing popularity of the FaceBook popup (among blog owners, anyway), it's possible that the security scanning processes will, eventually, find a way to bypass the FaceBook code, and continue scanning. This may avoid some spurious malware classifications - if FaceBook developers can find a way to certify a genuine FaceBook popup.

Many blog owners, who spend time perusing the Stats "Traffic Sources" display, are finding odd entries there, and are becoming needlessly alarmed. We are seeing several discussions this week, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken about mysterious traffic sources. What is "goo.gl", and why are they surfing my blog? and When I clicked on a log entry for "bit.ly", I got linked to a porn site. I don't want my blog associated with porn! This misuse of our blogs is not new - spammers have been doing this for years, to trick us into surfing to their websites.

I don't know that ghosts exist, but I believe in them. I don't know for sure that splogging bots exist, either. I believe in splogging bots more than I believe in ghosts. At least, I respect the threat that they provide. Ghosts can't hurt you. In Spam Blogs #3 , I discuss the scope of this problem. Here's one very possible scenario. You are tired of having your friends complain about not being able to see your blog, every time Blogspot hiccups. So you setup a folder on your ISPs server, you register a domain name (cool), and you publish your Blogger blog to your new domain. Fine. The next day, one of your friends emails you and says Why are you selling stocks (adult movies, drugs, what have you) now? And you go to your old URL on Blogspot, and look. And lo, you see a big advertisement blog, where your poetry used to be. WTF? So you think I'll fix them. and you back into Blogger and change your blog to publish it back to the Blogspot URL. Get rid of the sp...

Dirty Butter of Blog Village left a comment on my previous article Stolen Computers Our Blogger blogs are hosted on our own domain. Are we at just as much risk as those blogs hosted on blogspot? My immediate answer was "Somewhat". Then I realised that's pretty useless. A useful answer needs qualitative analysis. Then I asked myself how relevant each of these issues are, anyway? So I rewrote the issues, and described them as threats. Some threats you can avoid, others you can't. Threats that you may be able to avoid. Blogger accounts attacked by password guessing . Blogger blogs hijacked when deleted by the owner , and when deleted by a Blogger anti-splog bot . Blogger accounts attacked by identity theft. General unsafe use of personal computer . Unsafe use of personal computer in a public place . Unsafe use of any public computer . Here you are vulnerable to an attack thru your Blogger account, which controls the Blogger database containing your blog, before pub...

If you have a Blogger blog, you (your blog) are under attack . This is a very real problem. You may not even realise it, but you are vulnerable (actually, you're vulnerable because you don't realise it). Every computer security expert knows that there are thousands of computers, worldwide, that are not under the complete control of their legal owners. Computers under the control of a bad guy , after infection from a trojan or virus , are a serious problem.