MyBlogLog Hijacks - Its Not Just SEOMoz Anymore

By Li Evans

Loren Baker first reported about a flaw in MyBlogLog that happened when he and Carsten were signing up for the service.  Tonight Neil Patel's posting about SEOMoz being hijacked/stolen on MyBlogLog.  I noticed this first when Loren reported it, I signed up as a community member to watch it, since the caveman picture just "didn't seem right" (although funny) for how Rand would want SEOMoz represented there.

I did a little digging, and found that there's this "identity" of "Cheap SEO" who's taken not just Rand's SEOMoz, but Todd Friesan's "Oilman", Greg Boser's "WebGuerrilla" and Jeremy Shoemaker's "Shoemoney".  See below for the screen caps.

 

This brings up two important points blogger and search marketers should be asking themselves:

1. Are you monitoring everywhere on all the Web 2.0 sites where you could possibly have your own brand "hijacked" ?
2. Are the Web 2.0 services secure enough to prevent this type of identity hacking from happening in the future?

I don't doubt the MyBlogLog is working on a fix for this as I write this.  I hope that lessons like this help all search marketers learn to keep their eyes peeled for all the Web 2.0 services out there, so more hijacking like this doesn't happen!

UPDATE 12/27/06 01:30 PM EST:  I have contacted all three of the people involved in the hijackings.  It looks like the MyBlogLog team has removed those three blogs and SEOMoz's from the CheapSEO profile.

Comments

[shoemoney]

Hello ;)

Thanks for alerting me to this. I emailed the contacts and also rand, todd, and greg and they should be ok. I also suggested they do some sort of confirmation in the future like how google does sitemaps.

Thanks again!

[Li Evans]

You're welcome Jeremy! I wanted to make sure the three of you knew so I contacted a friend to forward my email to Todd and Greg too.

Looks like MyBlogLog is also handling this since the cheapSEO person no longer has yours nor the others attached to the profile.

Have a great new year with that cute baby of yours! :)