MyBlogLog Co-Author Spamming

I received an email a few days ago requesting me to become a co-author on Blogmemes Belgium MyBlogLog community. Thinking that I had received the invitation by mistake, I decided to ignore it. However, a post by Danny points out that these invitations aren't being sent out by mistake at all.

The request I got read as follows:

Hi msaleem,

I would like to add you as a co-author of my MyBlogLog community below:

Blog/Site: BlogMemes (http://www.blogmemes.be) MyBlogLog community: http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/Blogmemes_Belgium/

Your MUST click on the link below to accept this request:

[Confirmation URL was here]

Thanks, Blogmemes_Belgium

Even though I disregarded the confirmation, I did click through to see what Blogmemes was all about (thereby giving into the spam), and since the site was in a language I could scarcely decipher, I closed the window and continued browsing.

These unsolicited invites are the latest in MyBlogLog spam. It appears that several community owners were exploiting a hole in MyBlogLog that would allow them to invite people to become co-authors and in some cases add people as co-authors without even requiring confirmation. If you were one of the people spammed with such a request, I highly recommend checking to see if you were automatically made a co-author of a community with which you wouldn't like to be associated (just some friendly reputation management advice).

How bad was the system abuse? Well,

This grief probably belongs in some frickin' griefing hall of fame (with jackasses on both sides of the entrance, mind you):

  1. Send out thousands of emails to random people requesting that they co-author your community
  2. Force-join them all as co-authors
  3. Someone gets upset about being force-joined and leaves an angry message on the community, and EVERY single person gets an email alert that there's a message waiting for them (because they're all co-authors)
  4. Now you have dozens of angry people, all leaving angry messages on the community page, resulting in DOZENS of emails alerts being sent out to each victim
  5. And so on...

While the hole has been plugged for now, the frequency with which MBL abuse is occurring does make one wonder, How much value is the site really providing? This may not be a problem for someone with limited exposure (such as myself) and I have found the site to be a useful tool in getting to know the people that read my blog and some authors whose blogs I read, largely without problems, I can also see how this can be a huge headache for someone like Mike Arrington. For people with such a wide reach, I hope MyBlogLog's six point plan is successful in achieving the spiritual (blogically speaking) nirvana that it hopes for.

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Reader Comments (5)

Chris Hemphill, February 20, 2007

Another thing I noticed is comment spam in Myblogog profiles. I see the same messages from many of the same people over and over. I think Mybloglog is a great tool, but if the abuse doesn't stop I could see it becoming useless.

Muhammad Saleem, February 20, 2007

Chris, I would be very interesting to know how your MyBlogLog promotion is going. Please feel free to either comment about it here or send me an email to discuss it further.

Chris Hemphill, February 20, 2007

It has gone fairly well, but could be doing better (my part as a lack of promoting it). I have received 8 new members to my community, but I can't be sure if they would not have joined without the promotion. Right now the odds are good if you were to join my community right at this moment you would have a 1 in 30 chance of winning, but if you were to link the blog was well it would increase your odds to 1 in 15. For anyone that doesn't know what we are talking about I am giving away 1 $15 prepaid ITunes card for those that will either link my blog or join my Mybloglog community. For more information check Prepaid ITunes Giveaway.

2k a day, February 20, 2007

I can't stand those emails either. I've gotten a few from different blogs wanting me to co-author. The profile spam is annoying too.

Jacob Wyke, February 21, 2007

I got the exact same email from the same community and thought it was a phishing scam to begin with. At least the hole is fix now though.