28 August 2009

WordPress Hack Update (Google Reader)

As promised, I am sharing a remedy that I found this post in the wordpress.org site describing the problem I was having with WordPress. I have to say though, it frankly amazes me that WordPress is being hacked like that. I mean, it's been around a while. I would have expected it to be pretty hardened by now but in looking around for a remedy I read all kinds of horror stories about different exploits. Great interface, nice themes, pretty simple to use but I will not recommend it to my non-tech friends, even though it's open source, because of the security issues. It just requires too much technical knowhow to keep it running securely. Comments?

26 August 2009

(too) OpenID

Since I am getting totally into identity tech these days I figured it was about time to set up my OpenID and start using it myself. Being a Gmail user it seemed a no brainer to use my Google OpenID as my AP.

I checked the docs for my Google OpenID and presto whamo, I have my OpenID all set to go. Next, I decided that Facebook would be my first RP. So, after digging around on the web for a few minutes I found some instructions on how to do that. It's under Settings | Linked accounts. So easy.

So, I click on "Add" and up comes a list. There's Google, Yahoo and a bunch of others, so I pick OpenID and click "Link New Account" and Google comes up to verify that I am cool with the linkage. Nice. I check the list and Facebook wants my email address, cool, my Language, okay, makes sense and ... what... what's that... my Contacts? Facebook wants my Contacts List!?

No deal.

There is no option for me to just do authentication with Facebook using my Google account so I won't use my Google account. I am disappointed in Facebook (but not surprised).

Plan B. Looking for a nice OpenID provider that has nothing else to offer but my ID. :-)




07 August 2009

Google Reader Spam

Ugh! If you're using Google Reader to read this - well - you may not be able to read this because somehow some clever (but annoying) spammer has figured out how to inject spam into my posts for people using Google Reader. I would love to hear from any of my readers about a remedy for this. If I find one first, I will post it here.

Oh, and if you don't already know, I am using WordPress (for now).

(Note from Herb: As of December 2009 this site is now on Blogger)

05 August 2009

Upgrading my WP Site

I was recently hit with spam on this site so have finally upgraded to the latest and greatest version of WordPress.... it cost me nothing and I learned a cool technique for checking for blog spam... if there are more than two unique URL links in a post, it's probably spam so it gets held. Simple. I like it.