Nov 29
Check Your Links!
One of the nice things about building relationships with fellow bloggers is the notion of blogroll links, those listings of other blogs down the sidebars of other people’s blogs. Each time you stumble upon a new blog, if you like it, you might tend to enjoy some of the blogs that writer visits regularly.
There’s the potential, in blogrolls, to point your readers to blogs you feel are also deserving of their attention; and there’s the potential to get your writing more exposure.
Unfortunately, there’s also the potential for hackers to gain access to blogs that have either been shut down or had their security compromised and delete all content in favor of explicit content.
Shelly of The View from Here alerted me to the fact that one of the blogs I had in my sidebar over at A Stop at Willoughby had suffered such a fate. When I clicked that link, I was met with a variety of explicit photos of various body parts and sex acts. I’ve heard from the blogger who owned that URL — at least until hackers commandeered it — and he has given me an updated address, and the link has been updated.
The moral of this story, which I’m cross-posting at ‘Willoughby,’ is to check your sidebar links to make sure that they are still pointing to the blogs you think they are. You might have an unpleasant surprise waiting for a reader that you wouldn’t want them to see!
And thanks to Shelly for making us all aware of this unfortunate new hacker villainy.
November 30th, 2006 at 11:18 am
oh my! That’s a wake up call forsure! I will have to check links now.. how strange is that to have your address hacked. Why would anyone bother??? duh.