zerolight

I’ve written a new module, well a variation on my existing recent posts module, at the request of Wally (yes, you read right). This isn’t meant to replace the original recent posts module, it’s merely an alternative. This version adds a summary underneath the post title.

So there’s this very cool app called Quicksilver that I don’t use nearly enough, and I really should. It’s for the Mac obviously. A launcher if you will. Anyway, yesterday I was using my iPod for the first time in ages and was flicking through my playlists when I saw one called Quicksilver. I never created it, but it appeared to be full of a dozen songs from my library, so clearly came from my Mac. Baffled I was. Then it occurred to me, via Quicksilver on the Mac you are able to launch itunes songs and clearly each time you launch a tune it adds it to the Quicksilver playlist. Clever? Yes. Do I need such a playlist? Probably not. Sounds right up Ians street though. Quicksilver is worth checking out regardless.

Whatever happened to Innocent Until Proven Guilty? Is it right that Google Safebrowsing, or any other Anti-Phishing organisation can add you to their blacklist without first investigating the matter. Simply checking if phishing software is deployed on a site should not be considered proof beyond reasonable doubt. It’s relatively easy to hack a website and deploy your own malicious code. Surely before blacklisting a site, Google and Co should make some effort to determine whether or not the domain owner is aware of the malicious code. A simple email would suffice, giving the domain owner the opportunity to correct the offense. This doesn’t happen.

I realise that there are many thousands of blogs setup with the sole purpose of concealing the real intent of the domain, phishing. But that’s still no excuse for presuming guilt. My site has been blacklisted on Google Safebrowsing, and presumably as a result, countless other blacklists. Yet my site was hacked. Someone else occupied a space on my domain with malicious intent. Yet it’s me who’s punished.

Right now the affects are not apparent. If you are not running the latest version of Google Toolbar for Firefox with Google Safebrowsing enabled then you’re not going to notice anything different about my website. However if you do have it installed then with every page load you’ll be prompted with a dialog box warning you that my site is fraudulent, that it wants to steal your identity, your bank details, and so on. It urges you to leave. Soon this type of software will be built into every web browser. It’s certain to be on IE7 on Vista, Safari on Leopard, and a standard feature in Firefox.

What is the point of these blacklists if they end up inaccurate? I don’t know if I’m the first innocent victim to be blacklisted on these new anti-phishing sites, but I’m certainly not going to be the last. When our family visit our site looking for pictures of our son, they are going to be presented with fraud nags. The less tech savvy are going to run away, cutting up their credit cards.

You’d think an email to Google Safebrowsing would rectify the problem. Nope, they’re ignoring my emails. There’s no obvious centralised list, no body governing it, who do you complain to? How to you ensure that your site is not propagated through 100’s if not 1000’s of other blacklists? Guilty until proven innocent? I’m not sure there’s anyone to plead my case to.

No longer blacklisted? It appears so. Whom did I successfully plead my case to? I have no idea. It could be any one of a number of actions that resulted in normal service. Whomever you are, even if you’re some freaky autobot on a server somewhere, thank you.

My bl**dy website has been hacked. There’s some files hidden deep inside my site which contain fake bank websites. These are about to be removed for me by my host. How it’s been hacked I have no idea, as ACE-HOST pride themselves on being hacker-proof. More to the point, once it’s all cleaned out, how the heck am I going to get my site removed from the bl**dy black list. F’king hackers!

update: The host is doing nothing about it. I’ve removed all the crap myself, reset the permissions, changed the passwords, and notified google that my site is legit and had been temporarily highjacked. Thus far I remain on google blacklists. Nice eh?

It find its way into your inbox, clogging up your emails with stock market trade deals, wonder drugs, and p0rn. A decent anti-spam service can at least get rid of 90% of it. If only that was the end of it though. Now these spammers are attacking our blogs. I’m sick and tired of seeing yet another comment that is nothing more than jibbersh and a link to some p0rn site. Bog off, I don’t want it.

I’ve tried using Akismet to reduce it, and that works well. But they are still sneaking through. I’ve added another layer of spam protection in the form of Spam Karma 2 with an Akismet SK2 plugin. Will that prove enough to keep out the spammers? I doubt it. Pah.