Ghost let loose in my Bloglines account?
July 09, 2007
Something really weird is happening with my Bloglines account. All of a sudden I found two new feeds I certainly didn't add myself, in fact, had never even heard of before: one Didier Stevens and one Panzera Security blog. Very strange. Then, the next time I checked my newsreader, Didier Stevens was gone but to my surprise I saw that one of the feeds I do subscribe to, David Black, had 10 new posts. Upon closer examination I found that this Didier Stevens feed had inserted itself into David Black's feed, and the former was clearly advertising for various software solutions. A new sophisticated form of spam? I'm even supposed to have saved one post from the Panzera Security blog which I have never opened. Spooky. My mind needs some rest after a long days' work now, but would be grateful for any suggestions of what's up here ...
Hi Kristine, I've had a similar issue with my feeds and I suspect that it's to do with wordpress.com rather than with bloglines (I use Google Reader)
The atom version of my feed has been diverted/hijacked on two occasions but went back to normal after a day. There's some glitch, probably in the way wordpress.com deals with domain redirections, but as it fixed itself, it was difficult to get attention on the wordpress.com support forum.
I just recommend that people subscribe to my feedburner version now - perhaps you could see whether David publishes his feed in other formats and try swapping.
Posted by: Lloyd Davis | July 10, 2007 at 11:11 AM
Hmm... I don't know what to think, Lloyd. The feed the spam feed inserted itself into was indeed from a Wordpress blog, but before that I just had two brand new feeds showing up in my Bloglines account.
They're gone now but no reply from the Bloglines folks on what I posted to the support forum yet, just one from another person using Bloglines who had a similar experience.
Bad enough that my email box gets spammed, now also spam feeds in my newsreader. But then, I've had a few strange experiences with Bloglines recently, fresh posts disappearing before I get around to reading them etc, maybe time to get a new newsreader...
Posted by: Kristine | July 10, 2007 at 11:36 AM
Wordpress have noticed it now
http://wordpress.com/blog/2007/07/09/feed-oddities/
Of course it could also be a glitch in bloglines - they don't only happen in isolation :)
Posted by: Lloyd Davis | July 10, 2007 at 01:40 PM
Ooer. Good to see I was only momentarily possessed by "Didier Stevens" - looks like a wordpress.com bug which was soon fixed: http://wordpress.com/blog/2007/07/09/feed-oddities/
Posted by: David Black | July 15, 2007 at 11:34 PM