Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Richard Miller -
Number of replies: 10
My Moodle hosts several forums in which the participants discuss personal issues, and require serious privacy.

Recently posts from these forums have begun popping up on Technorati ... I just don't see how this is possible, and need to do something to address the problem.

I haven't seen anything in this forumon this subject, but any insights would be helpful.
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In reply to Richard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Possibly, but much more likely that you have been infiltrated or someone's password has been guessed. I've never heard of Technorati - I assume it's a bad thing....

Getting searching logs and see if you can spot the pattern!
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Richard Miller -
Technorati isn't evil -- it's an extremely popular service that indexes public blogs. I assumed (?) that their robots or spiders or whatever somehow found my forum's RSS feed ... or that someone republished it so they could find it. Or something.

Where do I find "searching logs"?
In reply to Richard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Errrm.... you've switched on RSS feeds for forums and you wonder why you have a problem??

EDIT:
Just had a look at Technorati. Looks a bit rubbish to me... all broken links and junk. Still.... wink
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Richard Miller -
I believed that there was no way to access the RSS feeds without having access to a password protected part of the site.

Am I wrong about that? I certainly can't figure out where they could be seen by outsiders.

Where would that be? How?
In reply to Richard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Someone (one of your studnets) may have put the URL of the RSS feed somewhere public, which would have let Technorati find it.
In reply to Richard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
It's only "security by obscurity" which isn't security at all.
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Richard Miller -
I just saw a notice on LinkedIn's RSS page (if you want to enable RSS for your network updates).

Here is the text of LinkedIn's warning:

"Some web-based feed readers publish your feed URLs on the web, making them available to search engines and everyone else. You should not subscribe to LinkedIn’s Personal feeds with a web-based feed reader unless it guarantees that your feeds are kept private."

That seems pretty clearcut.

In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Richard Miller -
Soooo ... I actually didn't turn RSS feeds on, they were (apparently) on by default. How do I turn them off?
In reply to Richard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
There is an admin setting for it. Can't remember where, use the search.
In reply to Richard Miller

Re: Forum posts appearing in Technorati - have I been hacked?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
....and they're *definitely* not on by default!