[Web4lib] Library Elf reveals user info

[Steve Lawson]

This problem with Bloglines is what bothers me; I have my Bloglines account
set up to be "private." If you click on an "X subscribers" link at the top
of a blog feed, you won't see my account linked, even if I am a subscriber.

I naturally assumed this meant that my feeds were *entirely* private. Yet
one of the commenters on Mary Minnow's blog said that her account was set to
"private" as well, but her Library Elf info was showing in the public
search. If that is true, the Bloglines "privacy" settings are useless.

I just tried to add my private GMail feed to Bloglines; it doesn't seem to
work. Bloglines got back a "not authorized" message when it couldn't
authenticate. I could add that private feed to my desktop aggregator,
NetNewsWire Lite, which prompted me for account information.

-Steve Lawson
Humanities Librarian, Tutt Library
Colorado College
http://library.coloradocollege.edu/steve

On 12/28/05, Edward Vielmetti <edward.vielmetti at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is a problem with Bloglines, My Yahoo, and most
> of the web-based RSS aggregators.  They tend not
> to have a notion of a "private feed" and instead
> focus on sharing as widely as possible.
>
>