Your site can be modified by hackers... and Google

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:47 pm

This article talks about the soon to come Google Autolinks feature which has been very controversial on the webmaster world and will explain why it is a serious issue, and perhaps even illegal.

http://www.iceteks.com/articles.php/googleautolinks/1/

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manadren_it · Post by **manadren_it** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 11:20 pm

I understand your concerns, but I wouldn't exactly call this illegal or hacking. Seeing as it's an opt-in program, and the user has to click a button to make it work, it's not illegal. It's not not hacking any more than a translation site or one of those "Mr T-ize a website" pages. The changes are only affected on the client side, so no unlawful intrusion is made.

What it is, however, is more akin to Microsoft plastering Windows with MSN links, forcing WMP and IE to install with the OS, and having WMP constantly offer links to partner websites whenever you play an mp3. Unlawful in the traditional sense? No. Unethical? Quite possibly. An anti-trust violation? That depends on how big it gets.

What it all comes down to is how it's implemented. As you mention in the article, ISBN numbers could become a big concern. So Google should provide website owners with some code to put into their sites to prevent Autolinks from working. And on a personal note, I don't like the idea of links being added to a page - a context menu item would be nicer.

Though I'm not going to get the toolbar anyway [because I don't want an extra toolbar, and I don't use IE], I'm not really sure about this concept. On the surface it seems like it could be really handy, but I'd like more options as to where I get my information from.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 11:35 pm

Yeah the issue is mostly for webmasters since it's opt out for them, if, and that's if, they provide code to disable it. Most users don't care about the issues it will bring, they'll just think it's convinient etc... The smarter users should't be using IE though so at least that's a small market we don't have to worry about.

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wldkos · Post by **wldkos** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 11:37 pm

Red, You made some fairlystrong comments in that article. I didn't get to read all of it, but I hope that you made it clear that it is your opinion and not 100% factual.

For you to say that it is hacking is way wrong. No one is hacking in the slightest bit, and your readers do not need to be worried by you using the wrong terminology.

You really need to go back and proof read this, since it is so strongly biased towards your opinion and will influence the computer illiterate people reading it.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 11:39 pm

Well basically it's compared to hacking since if someone defaces a site, or if a tool bar defaces it on the client side, to most illterate users, it all comes down to the same thing - the site was modified and is different then what the webmaster intended. So it's sort of like defacing in a way, it's just not server side. And the title is more of an eye catcher/metaphore then to be taken 100% literaly.

It is an opinion article but at the same time it stands as an eye opener about this issue, which mostly applies to site owners.

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Streety · Post by **Streety** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 6:40 pm

Sounds interesting although I'm unable to find anything about it at google. Do you have a link you could post?

In some ways this is nothing like hacking and in other ways it is worse. It is opt in so the user isn't immediately harmed (I say immediately becuase it could have a serious effect choice) which makes it nothing like hacking but at least with a hacked site the webmaster knows about it and can fix the problem.

I don't think we can limit this to IE though. If firefox or any other browser gains popularity I see no reason why Google wouldn't bring out a comparable toolbar.

If google do go ahead with this they should at least allow the webmaster of the site to state that they don't want these links being forced on their site. Sticking something in a meta tag would be all it would need. Apart from that I'm not sure how you would get around this. Replace characters with their html entities?

[edit]I found a link : http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/...15998&topic=238[/edit]

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 6:42 pm

Oh yeah I should have provided a link to not make it look like I'm making this up to go against google. Since in general I think google is a decent company, it's just too bad they may pull this one off.

http://toolbar.google.com/T3/

This is it right here.

And yes it's opt in for the users, but not for the webmasters and it should be.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:49 pm

Hey Streety sorry about that spam thing kicking you out. I'll have to tweak it and find out why it did a false positive. When you reach more posts it will stop scanning for spam. We just had issues with those free ipod scams and other spammers so I had to impliment this system. Your post had like 1 point too much to not make it as spam. lol, I should raise the threshold a bit maybe.

Oh and just curious were you editing your post when that happened? Since I don't see any post in the mod queue so if not I'll have to look into this.

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Streety · Post by **Streety** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 1:13 pm

Yeah, after I made my post I went looking for a link myself. I was editing my post to include the link when it happened. I guess it may have been that my edit was so soon after my post it confused the system. Perhaps make edits exempt from spam controls? No idea if it is possible though.

Actually I thought I had more posts . . . must have made them as a guest.

*Begins spamming the forum to avoid the . . . *

Wait, something is wrong there.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3128, old post ID:25576

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 1:43 pm

Yeah it applies to the whole post parser, to be honest I never even tested with editing, I just never considered it. It should in fact be exempt I'll work on fixing that when I get a chance. Now you're in the safe zone so don't worry about what keywords you may post.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3128, old post ID:25579

Streety · Post by **Streety** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:30 pm

Red Squirrel wrote: Yeah it applies to the whole post parser, to be honest I never even tested with editing, I just never considered it. It should in fact be exempt I'll work on fixing that when I get a chance. Now you're in the safe zone so don't worry about what keywords you may post.

The only reason I suggested it is that phpBB has a similar problem. Easily overlooked.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3128, old post ID:25611

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 5:10 pm

Can't wait to see how, once they release it. I'm sure there will be lawsuits.

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rovingcowboy · Post by **rovingcowboy** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 10:35 am

So what your saying is that no matter how nice a site we make they are going
to be letting visiters muck it up
that is what i consider hacking no matter if it is on my host's servers or on the visiters computer. the site will not look the way i want it to.

who in their dumb a.. mind thought that up.

they need to be shot. no wait. hang them up infront of a computer with their web site on and let them see how messed up it looks. and it gets by their stupid idea.

i use to think that yap program was good untill i started to notice that people would write anything on any body elses site just to make the site unread able so i got rid of the yap program.

my way of thinking if you want to write things so every one you want to see it can? then do an email and send it to them.

one

roving cowboy here if this really happens i will be one

roving cowboy.

http://ghh.sourceforge.net/index.php Found that in another forum it is to a site that is making things to combat google's hack search engine. just how you use these tools i dont know maybe red or ryan can figure them out and tell us.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:19 pm

It's not really bashing google per say, it's more letting public know what they are planing to do, and why it's bad. I won't stop supporting/using google because of this occurance, but I at least hope that google will realize that webmasters are not happy with this.

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rip_phreaker · Post by **rip_phreaker** » Fri May 06, 2005 10:24 pm

ok, please do not use the term "hacking" for this, this is cracking, hacking is modifying programs and hardware to suit YOUR needs cracking is malicous and does not help anyone but the cracker, linux was sooooo created by hackers, sorry if you consider this spam i will now post what i think on this: it is by all means WRONG and should not be used it is a violation of your rights (if u do download it make sure you are of an "altered state" so the EULA is void)

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