Well - that may be a bit of a stretch. But, while playing with the new Google Blog Search tool today, I did discover something interesting about Jeremy’s blog platform and Google’s new Blog Search tool. Jeremy is a long time blogger and Yahoo employee who I’ve seen several times at conferences on panels about blogging and search. In fact, he was part of one of my favorite sessions at this year’s PubCon in Boston.

Anyhow, it appears that Google Blog Search is some how exposing the email addresses of the people leaving comments on his blog posts. I’m not sure how or why, but I know that Jeremy isn’t letting it happen intentionally, it must be from the feed that Google is using?? Jeremy states on his site: I do not share or publish the email addresses or IP addresses of anyone posting a comment here without consent.

Here is the post I just left for him with the details:

Jeremy - Hope you’re having a great vacation. I was trying out the new Google Blog Search and discovered something scary about your blog and Google’s new search tool… It’s exposing the email addresses of your commenters. I did a search for my name and came up with a comment that I had left in one of your posts. Even though my email isn’t exposed on your site as intended, it’s showing up in the Google Blog Search result.

So I tested plugging in a few random strings from comments on your site on various posts and sure enough, I can see the email address of any comment poster on your site, if that comment has been indexed… I assume it has something to do with your feed?? Not sure if it’s just your blog or a certain platform…

Here is an actual screen shot:

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Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, Blogging, ,