BlogBackupOnline Should Be Banned!
First let me tell you what BlogBackupOnline really is. It is a free online service that backs up your blog daily, and stores all the data on their server. It doesn’t matter whether you use Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Friendster, LiveJournal, Serendipity, Windows Live Space, Movable Type, Terapad, or Vox, it recognizes the blogging platform itself and starts collecting data in no time. Every member gets 50MB of disk space for their backup and restoring a blog’s backup was never this easy. You can add as many blogs as you want and anyone’s blog you want. Yes, that’s right! You can backup anyone’s blog (using their feeds), and restore it wherever you want. Still confused? Duh! Continue reading…
A couple of weeks ago, some guy backed up my blog data (thanks to BlogBackupOnline), and was about to sell it off on Digital Point forums under the title Database of PR3 Blog for Sale (hey, I’m PR4 not PR3 :P ) for $20. I was watching my blog visitors through the Live plugin when surprisingly I started getting visitors from Digital Point. Just out of curiosity, I opened the traffic source, and found what was going on.
I reported that guy, but instead of banning him, those idiot admins at DP banned me for using multiple accounts even though I just have one. Luckily, the database wasn’t sold to anyone! :D When I found that I’m banned on DP, I made 10 new accounts and when I checked them today, they all were still working lol. The whole point of this article was to make all the bloggers aware of the disadvantages of this service.
I backed up three blogs yesterday. There was no one to stop me! You can see the screenshot below:
(Cick the image above to enlarge)
What could be done?
Hmm.. I went through the FAQ pages of BlogBackupOnline and found their support email address (support@techrigy.com). Everyone mail and request them to block their blog from getting backed up. Or what happened with me, could also happen with you!
So how many are with me in this? Spread the word! And do let me know your views below…
Author: Haris NadeemHe is the founder of Sizzled Core and a Pakistani blogger who loves gadgets and exploring out the web!
31 Comments
Madhur Kapoor
I agree with you.This is scary . The site should have a security mechanism through which a people can only make backup of his own blog.
Dec 21st, 2007
Keith Dsouza
This is really pathetic and scary they should atleast verify the site they are backing up with their owners. They definitely have to change or else so many bloggers will start to have problems
Dec 21st, 2007
roffi
i certainly don’t want it to happen to me.
Dec 21st, 2007
Nirmal
This is scary, how can anyone backup others blog. I agree with Keith, there should be some way to check whether the backup person is truly the owner.
Dec 21st, 2007
ReviewSaurus
Wow! that’s bad! I’m glad that you got saved just at the right time. The guys at DP suck big time. This blog post should be given all the publicity and for that stumbled!
Dec 21st, 2007
Shankar Ganesh
Well, you wrote about it. Much appreciated :)
Dec 21st, 2007
Haris
@ReviewSaurus: Thanks for the stumble buddy! I want all the bloggers to know about this.
@Shankar: You’re welcome! :D
Dec 21st, 2007
kanak
IE7 gives me a website certificate error . I am not able to visit this site… I wonder how come something like this can happen ? Without any security check how can someone be allowed to backup your blog. IS this a wordpress security loophole ????
Dec 21st, 2007
Keshav Khera
OMG!
This is really scary :eek: they should have a mechanism of adding a code to the blog source or adding a temporary post so that it is confirmed that the blog we are backing up is are own. Stumbled
Dec 21st, 2007
Brown Baron
Wow! That is definitely screwed up. Good thing you wrote about it buddy. Stumbled.
Dec 21st, 2007
Dj Flush
Really thoughtful and well researched post
I am sure no one uses BlogBackUp so its better they should shut their service or develop some authentication system fast
Dec 22nd, 2007
Marc
Look, as long as you have RSS feeds then your content can be stored elsewhere. Scraper sites do this all the time. No one in their right minds would buy a backup of a blog database. Even if they did and set up a blog with that ‘database’, then search engines would recognise the duplicate content.
Dec 22nd, 2007
Davinder
This is really scary.. but Haris why did you use such service. Man backup your blog from phpadmin or configure plugin to do automatic backup.
Anyway, very good that you blogged about this blogbackup service which has lot of loopholes… be cautious!!!
Dec 22nd, 2007
NasirJumani
They should make a system like other services in web. One can only backup a blog which is owned by him. I am amazed that even a newbie like me can tell the right steps to authenticate then how they can’t think abt it?? This is ridiculous :x
Dec 22nd, 2007
Gerard McGarry
Yikes, that’s a creepy technique. I mean, why wouldn’t they insist on providing authentication that the person doing the backup is the blog owner?
Without that, they’ve just made scraping of sites so much easier.
Dec 22nd, 2007
satya narayan
Really they are abetting crimes like database theft & should/can be sued if you live in USA or some places with strict cyberlaws. I just read that thread & found you banned. I feel sorry but you should not have created multiple accounts. Anyways no one would buy that. Also I’ve linked this post there.
Dec 22nd, 2007
silki
This is horrible.
This needs to be highlighted.
So I stumble it.
Dec 22nd, 2007
taggy
cant the blog owners block backuponline by IP ?
atleast for hosted wp
Dec 22nd, 2007
Haris
Thank you all for the stumbles. Really appreciated that. I would like each one of you to post about BBO on your blog, and let your blog readers know about them.
And thanks once again for spreading the news!
Dec 22nd, 2007
Haris
@Satya: Buddy, I never made multiple accounts (before I got banned) lol. That’s the only thing I don’t understand. Why did I got banned?!
Dec 22nd, 2007
Sumesh
I can understand your concerns, but for once, your paranoia is unfounded. There are plugins to import posts from a WP blog, and these are modified and used by spammers to create the posts like ” Hey here’s an interesting reading, [post excerpt]…”.
So, spammers will always do the bad stuff, and this service is just helping them offer a choice.
Still, it is easy for the service to add an authentication step like technorati’s blog claim.
I would not be very surprised if someone sued them for damage and they were taken down.
Dec 23rd, 2007
abdul
maybe its out to warez?
Dec 25th, 2007
Jenny
that’s horrible. i’ve never used it so i don’t worry but wow. that is fucked up!
Dec 26th, 2007
Hassan Abbas
my goodness, never think abt it. thx for sharing ur experience
Jan 6th, 2008
Fahad
Wow, I never knew about this flaw in blogbackuponline. I use it for backups for my own blog as well. Their service is good, but yea there definitely needs to be a security mechanism for this type of incident to not happen again.
Jan 22nd, 2008
Mathias
Says more about the person offering the backup for sale…
Feb 9th, 2008
Haris
@Mathias: Who?
Feb 13th, 2008
Alexander Rose
DP uses IP-tracking, so the only way you got banned is if you have 2+ accounts registered by the same IP, perhaps you use an internet cafe or something? Anyway, this service for backing up blogs is awful and should be banned. Hey, I’m going to steal Google’s blog and sell it fox $WXYZ!
Mar 3rd, 2008
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