Squatters taking over abandoned blogs
There is some more interesting news on the blogjacking front.
The folks at Blogger (a.k.a. Google) finally got back to me after I sent them some questions about how widespread the blogjacking phenomenon is and what blog-hosting sites are doing about it. (For those of you just tuning in, Cyberscenes reported last month that the URLs to at least 3 popular local blogs were leading users to porn, scam, and spyware sites.)
Sean Carlson, a spokesman for Google, e-mailed me recently and confirmed that there has been a problem with "dictionary attacks" on Blogger and other blog-hosting sites. Fraudsters (his term) have been able to hack some passwords by basically running an electronic dictionary program through the password prompt, he said. If your password is a word like banana, the bad guys have got you, he said.
Carlson said that Blogger is encouraging users to change to passwords that mix letters and numbers (mine are all mixed now). He added that the latest release of the Blogger software has increased password security protection .
Carlson also said that some apparent blogjackings are actally part of an only slightly less annoying trend that could be called bookmark harvesting.
"In some cases, users delete their blogs, and their domain goes back into rotation," he said. "Then, anyone can sign up for a new blog on that domain."
In other words, spammers and scammers can scan domain-name registration sites for recently abandoned URLs that appear to have been blogs and snap them up. It's not that hard, because Blogger domain names often have the word blogspot in them.
It's actually pretty smart in an annoying sort of way. Most of the dead blogs are probably still in the bookmarks and favorites lists of their former readers, and some blogs continue to be listed on blog-aggregating sites for quite a while after their authors have gone on to other pursuits.
Just a day after I heard from the folks at Blogger, I received an e-mail from Cynthia Iris, who was better known as the Wellesley-based blogger behind the Diana Chronicles, one of the blogs I wrote about that was directing users to spyware sites.
It turns out that Cynthia's blog URL appears to have been harvested, rather than blogjacked.
"Several months ago I deleted the blog," Cynthia wrote me. "Haven't given it a thought since. Just thought I'd let you know that the Diana Chronicles have been long gone as a legit blog."
If any of you out there in Wellesley or beyond still have a browser bookmark to the Diana Chronicles, best delete it now.
Cyberscenes was both amused and disturbed by a recent post on daigo.org, the personal blog of Daigo Fujiwara of Watertown.
For the uninitiated, Fujiwara is a graphic designer and Japanese baseball fanatic (his son's middle name is Ichiro) who runs two other blogs, japaneseballplayers.com and a Japanese-language Red Sox fan site, Go-RedSox.com.
While US baseball has come a long way in integrating Japanese players into its mainstream, apparently some of the rest of us have a way to go.
"I've seen this photo on many websites, even in mlb.com, sportsline.com, and St. Petersburg Times, labeled as D-Ray's new third baseman Akinori Iwamura, taken at last spring's World Baseball Classic tournament," Fujiwara wrote under a copy of the picture purported to be the Tampa Bay Devil Rays player.
"The problem is, it is not Iwamura. It is actually Chiba Lotte Marines' third baseman Toshiaki Imae, who also played for Japanese team in WBC as a third baseman. . . . come on, this is like labeling A-Rod 'Chipper Jones.' "
Full disclosure alert: After the Red Sox signed Japanese pitching sensation Daisuke Matsuzaka, Go-RedSox.com entered into a partnership with Boston.com.
Ralph Ranalli is a staff writer and web producer for Globe West. He can be reached at rranalli@globe.com. 
