Another MyBlogLog exploit!
Check it out, I’m the proud owner of Matt Cutts blog and quite a few others over on MBL:
Well, not quite. First of all, that’s a poser Matt, not the real deal. Second of all, I don’t really own all those blogs, but I do in MBL land. This shouldn’t be able to happen, but MBL seems to have designed this into the product.
Here’s how in three quick steps you can own all the unclaimed acounts on MBL — ouch.
1) Sign up for MBL, it only takes a second. Use bogus info for this, you can even use a bogus email, MBL doesn’t confirm anything by email so it will work. Keep track of your info though so you can access your account later.
2) Run this search at Google:
That search will bring back all the profile pages of MBL accounts that have not been claimed by an author yet. There were at least 3k accounts when I first noticed this last night, but I have noticed others catching on to this and snapping them up already.
3) Surf to each profile and claim each blog as yours. Don’t worry if it’s not actually yours, it doesn’t matter at MBL. You are free to claim whatever account you want, first come, first served. Here’s a screen showing how to claim a blog:
That’s it! You can now take ownership of every unclaimed blog you want at MyBlogLog.
**** My account shown above was for testing purposes only and all blogs will be removed from the account within 24hrs unless the MBL guys want it for testing too. I was also being wise above, This is bad news and I don’t recommend anyone try this at home ****
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Be prepared to be banned… then reinstated… then given a featured listing as top member
Boy I hope not!! I really enjoy MBL, they just need to get this stuff in order.
I guess their solution is going to have to be that you have to put some verification code in your blog to prove that you own it. Maybe a way for them to force everyone to put their stats tracking script on their sites…
Did you tell the admins in MBL first? It is useful if you email them so they know about it to fix it..
@Simon: They can’t force the stats script!! All they have to do is to do claim your blog in the same way Technorati lets you do it..
All that is required is adding a link to mybloglog (so that MBL knows you are the site author), send in the crawlers (find link? good) and then you can remove that link if you want to.
That is how you claim your blog on Technorati!
haha, Going the shoemoney route are ya?
One thing that is certain, just as in life, the Internet is full of people that want to take credit for other people’s work.
I like MBL, too. My one attempt to contact them for support via email, however, was met with deafening silence. The old “hey, we wrote down the answers to a few questions here” letter, followed with a “so, ya know…if you still need help, we’ll magically know that and follow up with you”.
I hope they can tighten up the ship. There are a lot of well-meaning people on there. The basic tools exist for a very cool opportunity. But, from what I’ve observed, people sort of just wander around in the dark and bump into each other, mostly.
[…] This didn’t make much sense, so I put it through my “DaveN English into American English” decoder ring, and it came out as “In MyBlogLog (MBL), it’s too easy to take ownership of unclaimed blogs.” Read this article on Google Tutor for a better explanation. […]
[…] This didn’t make much sense, so I put it through my “DaveN English into American English” decoder ring, and it came out as “In MyBlogLog (MBL), it’s too easy to take ownership of unclaimed blogs.” Read this article on Google Tutor for a better explanation. […]
I found out about this the first day I joined MBL!
I took ownership of the Flickr.com community and changed the settings to my own space on Flickr.. The Flickr communtity had over a hundred members.. Now it’s all mine!!! [*Evil laught*]… In other news, I also found a way to join your own community!
This is funny and not. I particularly like Chuck’s comment about MBL being like wandering around in the dark.
I have found it to be hard to find people with my interests. Everyone just sort of says “Hi”, and “Thanks for stopping by”. No real conversations going on here folks.
It’s kinda like getting your yearbook signed by the popular kids in Jr. High.
At least Googler is having some fun with it, and I do hope it does not get him banned.
ilker, I’m already famous just not as The Tutor
Nomad, I know what you mean. it’s not a very chatty place unless you reach out. for example, most comments in this thread were made by people I met over on MBL!
Well, they can have my blogs for all I care!
I’m not going to go running around claiming my blogs on every Mickey Mouse blog index that appears
I have better things to do. Erm. What’s the procedure again?
[…] Google Tutor successfully owned Matt Cutts blogs at the MyBlogLog. […]
[…] For further English explanations on this post please read my SEO friend Eli Feldblum on his offical Rankabove blog. As a service to all of you readers i added some extra links to former MBL exploites: shoemoney-1, shoemoney-2, jensense, googletutor […]