Checking my email, I found not one but two different requests to be an
coauthor at MyBlogLog. It’s making me guess that this is simply a new way people
are trying to draw attention to their own sites, related to the MyBlogLog visit
spamming
reported by SoloSEO last month. In one of the cases, I was actually made a
coauthor even though I didn’t confirm this.
In both cases, I got emails that said something like:
I would like to add you as a co-author of my MyBlogLog community below:
Blog/Site: [INFO WAS HERE]
Your MUST click on the link below to accept this request:
[CONFIRMATION URL WAS HERE]
With the first one, I went to checkout the site and was shocked to discover I
was already made a coauthor of the blog. I have no idea how that happened, since
I didn’t — most definitely did NOT — click on the confirm link.
By making me a coauthor, suddenly this blog was showing up in my
profile. It
also seemed like there was no way to remove myself as a coauthor.
Finally I figured it out. Go to the site listing (if this happens to you).
Then choose the Edit Site Settings option. Scroll down and find the Remove
Site/Blog button. Push that. It sounds scary, like you’ll delete the blog
itself. No — it just removes you as a coauthor.
FYI, for more about MyBlogLog, check out the
Yahoo Acquires MyBlogLog
& More On How It Works I did last month at Search Engine Land. Lee Odden had
a good
story on the service recently, too. Also checkout Shoemoney’s feature
request
list. I’m totally with him on the need to better control messages — that’s
an entire other world of spamming that’s going on.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Yea, I got that also and so did Tamar W.
Yep, I got one last night. I took a look and this particular Belgian blog already had over 200 co-authors, thankfully I hadn’t been auto-added…
Hello Danny,
Let me start by apologizing for the frustration you felt trying to remove my blog from your list. I hand picked the best SEOs for inclusion in this test, for a reason. I knew they might have friends inside of MyBlogLog or Yahoo who would get this fixed fast.
I have no connection to the Beligum spammers, who where mass mailing Co-Author requests. I picked the top 10 authors who would be most likely to A) blog about the problem, B) might know someone who had connections to get it fixed.
For anyone else out there, receiving requests still, from other accounts. I assure you that I’m not connected with them, and I’m just trying to get this fixed.
Sorry again for the inconvenience,
Bradford Knowlton
I did a search before posting to see if anyone had reported this and came up with zilch. But now I’ve tried a specific blog search and come up with several matches, all having the same issues. Most important, , I came across this official MyBlogLog post saying they are aware of the problem and have put in a fix. And yet the Belgium blog so many people complained about for sending out these emails remains active.
Yeah I got one as well. I simply deleted it. Haven’t been auto-added to anything though.
I had three of them…thankfully none of that auto-adding stuff, though…
I guess that somebody’s always going to find a way to spam any situation or service.
“I hand picked the best SEOs for inclusion in this test, for a reason.”
I’m going to pretend that I fall under that category rather than the spam list. The request made me feel all warm and fuzzy for about .000134 seconds.
Danny — we cleaned out all the co-authors of the Belgian blog and deactivated the invites (god knows I wish we could rescind the emails as well, but no luck there).
The only other thing to do would be delete the community entirely, but I’m really nervous about that. I’d like to get to a point where the entire team isn’t spending the bulk of its time thinking about spam, so the last ting I want to do is engage a spammer in a frontal assault.
Any ideas on what to do?
Just an update — we blogged the whole nasty mess along with what comes next on our blog. I hope you’ll take a moment to have a look and let us know your thoughts. http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/weekend_spamtac.html
I also got some and was quite surprised. Strange way to get some (non related) attention for your website…