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Stupid New Feature Makes Digg Spamtastic

thegooglecache.com — Proof of concept shows how the new url-based friend-adder feature makes "friend spamming" easier than myspace.

Who dugg this?

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20 Comments

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  • omnidugg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I have a friend :)
  • webist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4O Boy! This could be more annoying than twitter.
  • Haohmaru, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It didn't work on my profile. Even scripts can't get me friends!
  • omnidugg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've just thought... this 'feature' would also allow you to (unknown to them) link people's IP addresses to their Digg username. bad...
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If THEY bury it that's one thing. But it's another thing if they try to stiffle people talking about the site having had a security flaw AFTER it is fixed. If there is another article submitted, very good one, that does NOT stay on the homepage after the fix, then this place is just a big censorship factory. How ironic would that be. "power to the people. Oh but we secretly bury whatever we don't like". Hidden editors. That is what is creepy.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2buried. i imagine this was, in part, because...
    1. They are fixing it right now.
    2. If it hit the front page and tens of thousands of visitors came to it, the friends requests would kill the site.
  • mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's really annoying. That's beyond annoying. I can't imagine that this would not be abused, and when it is I'll just stop using Digg. It's creepy, too. Thanks for pointing it out, russvirante.
  • 2ndDairy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So...I am putting this on my site. :-0
  • casperb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's a very good point - I would consider this a security flaw. Making others able to connect your digg profile to an IP-address is just the first step towards what could be big privacy concerns - imagine a big network doing this kind of tracking across all their domains. Personally I just got my first Digg friend.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1bad news...
  • omnidugg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wouldn't bother. They'll be working on a fix right now. If they know what they're doing, they'll have implemented a fix before this makes the front page.
    But until then, tin-foil hat wearers might like to log-out of digg.
  • omgomgomg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2hahahaha digg has a friends list. nerdspace here we come
  • bysubmitted, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Digg it up!
  • omnidugg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1>>I would consider this a security flaw

    Hell yeah. A major one. If they were always this sloppy with their security, I for one would certainly stop using digg. But it looks like its a one-off rather than being symptomatic of a larger problem. ***** happens, lets just see how quickly they fix it.

  • elguercoterco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2yet another reason to leave digg for good
  • omnidugg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1>>imagine a big network doing this kind of tracking across all their domains

    I doubt that would happen with any reputable site... when you next visit digg and it tells you you've got a new friend, ppl would get suspicious, and one can tell simply by viewing the HTML whether a site is using this trick. But porn & warez sites, perhaps.
    There's also a hell of a lot of tracking done by sites anyway, unknown to 99% of surfers. A lot of the ad-networks (particularly the less reputable ones) give webmasters some pretty interesting features.
  • omnidugg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ah well, they'd better fix it quick then...
    http://reddit.com/info/1e0gu/comments
    I dare say most reddit readers would also have a digg account, and a fair proportion of them would be logged in...
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Why does it keep getting dugg?
  • omnidugg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0...and I'm sure the community would get over losing a member who's been here for all of six weeks
  • omnidugg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0??? I don't see why you say that. Perhaps a reason to log-in to digg until they resolve this problem (and of course you can still read the stories and comments without being logged in), but I don't see why this would make you want to leave for good. Its not as though this is the latest in a long line of privacy/security problems. But hell, if you want to leave, no-one's stopping you

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